


To Hell and Back

by sarahkwut



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018), Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018) RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:46:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22411969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahkwut/pseuds/sarahkwut
Summary: Sabrina was successful in her efforts to retrieve Nick from Hell, but the damage - physical and emotional - is deep. Sometimes, the only way to heal is to go your separate ways and trust things will work themselves out in the end.(Written before Part 3 - an alternate take on how Nick recovers from his time in Hell - with and without Sabrina).
Relationships: Nicholas Scratch/Sabrina Spellman
Comments: 56
Kudos: 176





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece back in July, post Part 2, pre Part 3, when my office at a university is so utterly slow I have no choice but to find non-work ways to fill the 8+ hours most days. I didn't think I'd publish this piece, but after Part 3 (I'm only through ep 5 at the time of posting, but I've got a good idea of what's to come because I do love a good spoiler), I found I had to. 
> 
> Without any inkling of what was to come, I certainly came up with some similarities between this fiction and what happened, namely Dante's 'Inferno' (which I do not think was done justice) and Nick having a lot of trauma to sort through. But I obviously handled it sans drugs and pagans and time travel and monarchs. 
> 
> It's title is inspired by the Maren Morris song "To Hell and Back." I HIGHLY recommend listening to it before/after/during reading this piece. The opening line and the chorus... It's Nabrina. 
> 
> Enough rambling. Here I am, posting this full piece, errors and all, because we need to hold onto some Nabrina hope going into Part 4. 
> 
> It's in 3 parts - picks up several month after Part 2 ended and takes us on a journey through the next several years.

> _Smoke was comin' off my jacket and you didn't seem to mind  
>  I left a long trail of ashes and you said, "I like your style"_

She wakes first.

They knew she would.

Her injuries were far less severe, as severe as they were.

She’s confused at first.

Where is she?

Her bedroom.

That makes sense, she supposes.

But why is Aunt Hilda fussing over her?

Why is Roz there, looking grave yet relieved?

Even Salem has an air of concern about him.

And why does everything hurt so much?

“Ow!”

She tries to lift her head to fire off all of these questions, but a sharp pain causes her to return it to her pillow and close her eyes against the light that, while dim, seems so bright.

“Easy now, dear,” comes Hilda’s voice. “Let’s not rush it. You’ve been through a lot. You need to rest and heal. I’ll bring you something for the pain in just a nip. And maybe something to eat, too? Are you hungry?”

She groans out a no.

She’s too busy trying to understand what all the images flashing before her mean.

Fire.

Heat.

There’s ice, too.

Socrates comes to mind. Homer. Cleopatra. Helen of Troy. Someone called Ciacco standing in an icy rain. There’s a Pluto. Filippo Argenti. Epicurus. Alexander the Great. A flying monster she feels is called Geryon and something about Bolgias. Cain. Anthenor of Troy. Ptolemy. Judas.

Nick.

“Nick!”

Everything comes together suddenly, one high definition picture of a poem turned reality.

“Sabrina…” Roz tries to calm her down.

“Where is he?” she demands. “Nick? Where is he?”

She prays to Lilith she didn’t fail. If she failed…

Well then, she would simply have to go back.

“He’s resting in Ambrose’s room,” HIlda supplies as she tries to settle Sabrina back into her bed. “You can see him later. Rest, now. It’s important that you heal.”

“I need to see Nick.”

“Later,” Hilda tells her. “You’re still too weak.”

“I need…”

“Sabrina, rest,” Roz tries. “You can’t be there for Nick if you’re not healed yourself.”

She continues to argue, to try and get out of her bed and to Ambrose’s room. She won’t believe Nick is there until she sees him for herself.

“I guess we’ll do this the hard way,” Hilda mutters. Sabrina is protesting too much to realize her aunt is muttering a spell.

Soon, she’s asleep once more.

* * *

When she wakes again, Hilda is content to let her see Nick.

She’s not ready for what greets her.

He’s unconscious, the only thing she was prepared for. His complexion is ashen, his body wasted away. He’s no longer the solid form of muscle and strength she folded herself into when he held her. There are cuts, bruises, scars.

“Oh, Nick,” she whispers. “Auntie…”

“I’ve done everything I can,” Hilda tells her as gently as she can. “It’s on him to come back to us. His body has been through a lot. I can’t imagine what his soul…” she trails off, realizing she will only upset Sabrina further.

“What can I do?” she asks Hilda. “How can I help him?”

“Sit with him,” Hilda recommends. “Talk to him. I think it would do him well to hear your voice. I’ve chatted his ear off, but, well, dear, I’m not you.”

She leaves the room with a kiss to Sabrina’s head and a promise to bring her some tea.

Sabrina sits gingerly on the edge of the bed. She picks up his hand and hates how cold it is. How limp it is. How weak and brittle it feels. Nicholas Scratch is a lot of things, but weak isn’t one of them.

He’s brittle though, she thinks. He puts forth a hard exterior, all cunning and brave. And he’s so very brave. Braver than even she is. But under the surface, where the real Nick lies, he’s a little lost.

She doesn’t know much about him.

She knows his parents died when he was young and he’s been at the Academy for years. She knows his intelligence surpasses most. He’s a bit of a nerd at heart, always with his nose in a book, whether researching something for her or reading because he loves to learn. She knows he’s exceptionally powerful for a young warlock, capable of magic and potions others wouldn’t attempt. It hadn’t been a lie or even bragging when he said he was the best binder and conjurer since Edward Spellman.

But she doesn’t know how his parents died, or even how old he was when it happened. She doesn’t know why he isolates himself in spite of his popularity, or why it was so challenging for him to love. She’s never bought into the belief that witches and warlocks are into free love and multiple partners when it comes to him. He’s always been a little different, a little less like his counterparts. She doesn’t even know what his favorite breakfast food is.

In hindsight, all of the other drama surrounding them stripped away, she doesn’t think she was a very good girlfriend in some ways.

Not that Nick was a standout boyfriend on all accounts.

No, Nicholas Scratch is definitely brittle. Strong on the outside, fragile where no one can see. There’s something within him that’s a little broken, something that holds itself together by the thinnest of threads. She wants to know more about that something. What put it there, what can be done to heal it.

“Nick,” she whispers.

There’s no response.

She realizes she expected one. She expected his refined voice to reply “Sabrina” or else “Spellman.” Or for him to squeeze her hand or furrow his brow. She didn’t expect silence.

She doesn’t really know what to say, so she just starts babbling. Hopes he hears her.

“You’re safe. You here, at the mortuary, with me. Don’t worry about me, because I know you will. I’m okay. No lasting harm done. We won, Nick. Lucifer is gone and you are here, with me, where you belong. It’s going to be different for us from now on. Better.”

She pauses, squeezes her hand. There’s still nothing from Nick. She continues talking.

“Aunt Hilda has been taking care of you and I’m going to help her, now that I’m allowed out of bed. She says she’s done what she can and that it’s on you to wake up now.” She brushes his hair from his forehead. It’s unkempt and dirty. She’ll wash it later. “Remember when you found out that Ambrose and I had performed a mandrake spell and I was mortal? I asked you to be stronger than you’ve ever been that day.” She smiles just slightly. “I suppose you took that to the extreme, didn’t you? Binding yourself to Satan.” Her finger trails over his lips. Nothing. “I hate to ask again, Nick, but I need you to be even stronger now. Wherever you are, whatever you’re fighting, I need you to be strong enough to come back to us. To me.”

Aunt Hilda returns. She has tea for Sabrina and something in a plastic sort of bag she presumes is for Nick.

“Some lavender tea and biscuits for you,” she says, sitting the tray near Sabrina. “And I have some nutrients for Nicholas.”

“Nutrients?”

“He needs sustenance.” Hilda is gentle in her delivery. “His body is weak, dear. It’s almost as though he’s been starved. I’m afraid I’ll have to take a page out of the mortals’ book to get this into him.” She produces a needle and plastic tube and Sabrina understands. She’s going to run an IV to keep him nourished.

“Is he in pain?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Hilda answers honestly. “He doesn’t seem to be, but if he can’t respond…” Sabrina nods. Nick can’t tell them if he’s hurting. He can’t show them, either, it seems. “I have him on a low dose of pain potion, just in case.”

“What else?”

Hilda glances at Sabrina as she works to ready the IV.

“What do you mean?”

“What else?” she repeats. “What else are you giving him? What’s wrong with him?”

Hilda sighs.

“Just the pain potion and now a liquid meal,” she says. “I’m afraid I can’t really be sure what’s wrong with him. He has a lot of cuts and bruises. I’ve cleaned them up and bandaged the worst of them. When he’s a bit stronger, I’ll tend to some of the scarring, although I don’t know that I’ll be able to prevent it entirely. He had a fever initially, but I gave him some herbs and that seemed to do the trick.”

“So we just - wait?”

“I’m afraid that’s all we can do, dear.”

Sabrina doesn’t watch as Hilda inserts the needle to start the IV. She focuses on Nick’s hand in hers. The same hand she kissed when she killed Amalia. She had seen the broken part of Nick that night. Raised by a wolf, of all things. It was as appropriate as it was devastating. Appropriate because _of course_ Nick’s familiar was large and cunning, devastating because he had only known the love of a wolf.

His hand is pale and veiny and cold. She brings it between both of her hands, hoping to warm it up. A tear falls. Another joins it.

“Visit with him for a while,” Hilda says in a soft voice. “I’ll be back to check on you both in a bit.”

Sabrina only nods as another tear falls.

Soon, she’s crying outright. For everyone. For everything. For Nick. Her parents. Her aunts. Ambrose. Prudence. What remains of the coven. Harvey. Roz. Theo. Lilith, even.

Herself.

She hasn’t had time to cry. She’s cried, to be sure, but not like this. Not properly. She hasn’t grieved for all that was, all that isn’t, all she thought she knew that she was oh so very wrong about. She’s only sixteen - seventeen, soon - and she’s been through so much. More than anyone, mortal or witch, should have to go through. All because of who she is and what she is.

She can’t stop crying now that she’s started. She lies down beside Nick and misses him fiercely in that moment.

“If you were here, you’d hold me,” she whispers. Because at the moment, it’s not about who did what or who betrayed who. It’s about the fact that she hurts in her soul and Nick had always been able to make her feel okay when his arms wrapped around her.

When Hilda returns, she finds Nick as she left him. Sabrina is curled at his side, not quite touching him, exhaustion evident even in her sleep. She fetches a crocheted throw from a chest in Ambrose’s room and drapes it over her.

“Get some rest, darling.” She kisses Sabrina’s hair.

After a moment, she kisses Nick’s forehead, too.

The man - man, certainly, because a boy wouldn’t have done what he did to save her niece - doesn’t have a mother to hover over him.

She’ll have to do.

* * *

“How is he?”

“No change.”

Rosaline enters the room and takes a seat on Ambrose’s desk chair. She’s taken to coming to visit every other day or so. She’s worried. Sabrina seems so lost. Nick is lost, too, but in a different way. She wants to guide them both back to the present, but she doesn’t know how. So she visits, because that’s all she can do.

“He looks to have a little more color in his cheeks,” she offers. Sabrina nods. It's true. She’s noticed it too. She prays to Lilith it’s a good sign.

“Hilda’s IVs of nutrients seem to be helping.”

He hasn’t gained back any mass, but she assumes his body needs whatever Hilda puts in that bag to repair his insides first. If - when, she corrects herself - he wakes up, they’ll worry about helping him get strong again.

“And how are you?”

Sabrina gives her oldest and dearest friend a sad smile.

“No change.”

Roz’s heart breaks a bit. She sees the evidence that suggests Sabrina spends most of her day in Ambrose’s attic room. There are books and papers, a plate and empty tea cup that need to be taken downstairs. They’ve gotten Sabrina to resume some of her studies, at least, and it seems she reads her textbooks to Nick.

She decides to try something.

She closes her eyes and focuses.

She’s nearly ready to give up when she finds him. She takes in as much as she can before she opens her eyes again.

“His body is healing.” Sabrina snaps her head to look at her friend, having lost herself in a jumble of thoughts about the conjuring spell she’d just read to Nick, wondering about Prudence and Ambrose’s mission, thinking of Aunt Zelda’s determination to re-build as the Church of Lilith, of Nick. “It’s slow, but its steady. Nick himself, his soul, he’s there. He’s trying to get back to you.”

“He’s in a sort of purgatory?” Sabrina questions. That’s fine. She’ll just go get him. She’s been there before. Heaven, she’s been to Hell. Purgatory would be a picnic.

“No. I can’t really explain it. It’s sort of like… His body was so broken that his soul needed to go dormant to give it a chance to heal. His soul wants nothing more than to come back to this plane, but his body is still too weak to receive it - its damaged, too.”

Roz allows the silence that follows. Sabrina is absorbing the new information, undoubtedly trying to find a way to bring him back, fix it all.

“Do you think he can hear me?” she asks after a while. She sounds small and vulnerable. “When I talk to him? If his soul is dormant…”

“If he can hear anyone, it will be you,” Roz assures her. “I know it’s been days, but he needs to heal on his own. When he’s ready, he’ll come back to you.”

Roz stays a little longer. When she’s alone with Nick again, Sabrina brushes her hand down his chest. She feels his ribs and it hurts her heart.

“Heal, Nick,” she says. “But please, don’t keep me waiting much longer.”

* * *

A few days later, she’s a Dr. Cerberus with Roz, Theo, and Harvey. She swings from wanting to be nowhere other than at Nick’s side to wanting to be nowhere near the mortuary. She’s going crazy, waiting and wondering. Patience isn’t her virtue.

“How are you doing with everything else?” Theo asks. “Nick, notwithstanding.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”

After her meltdown at Nick’s bedside that first day, she’s used her time spent with him to figure herself out - at least as much as she can.

“So many people have tried to decide who I am,” she tells her friends. “What I am. Someone has always meddled, tried to take away my choices. But I’ve realized… I get to decide that. I get to choose who I am and how I use my powers. No one else does. My choices belong to me and I’m going to hold onto that from here on out. And pray to Lilith that there isn’t another damned prophecy.”

“So…,” Harvey starts nervously, “who are you?”

Sabrina sits up taller and squares her shoulders.

“I’m Sabrina Spellman,” she declares. “Half witch, half mortal. Daughter of Edward and Diana Spellman. I don’t know what my future holds, but I’m more okay with that than I have ever been. I get to decide how it plays out.” She smiles a bit. “I get to use my powers for good. I’m not evil. No matter what others have tried to tell me.”

She means it as a slight against the likes of Lucifer Morningstar, but she finds she means it, just a little, towards Harvey. If he’s phased, he doesn’t let on.

“Where does Nick fit into this?” Harvey continues.

He can’t decide how he feels about Nicholas Scratch. He still thinks the guy is arrogant, but he can’t deny, not any longer at least, that the warlock loves - loved? - Sabrina. He thinks often of asking Nick why he showed up the night the Greendale 13 arrived. “Because she asked me to.” He had known before Sabrina - and maybe even before Nick - that Nick had feelings for his ex-girlfriend. Still, he struggles with the knowledge that Nick would betray Sabrina in such a deep way if he does, in fact, love her as much as he believes the warlock does.

“I don’t know,” Sabrina answers honestly. “Right now, I just need him to wake up.”

She changes the topic.

* * *

It’s just her and Roz a little while later. Harvey and Theo have gone off to some basketball thing and they’re walking in the general direction of the mortuary.

“What about Nick?” Roz asks. “When he wakes up, what are you going to do?”

Sabrina sighs. She didn’t want to talk about it with Theo and Harvey, but Roz is different. She’s known her the longest and there are just some things you talk to your best girlfriend about that you don’t share with others.

“I really don’t know,” she admits. “I want him to wake up so badly, Roz. I want to hear him call me ‘Spellman’ and find him by the fireplace reading a book or at Dorian’s drinking bourbon.” Roz doesn’t know what Dorian’s is, but she doesn’t asks. She understands there are parts of Sabrina’s world she won’t be a part of. Just like there are parts of hers Sabrina won’t be a part of. “But he lied to me. I find myself wondering what was real and what wasn’t. Was it Nick that manipulated the Choosing during Lupercalia so I could be with him? Or was it Nick doing that on Satan’s behalf? Was it Nick that told me I didn’t have to shoulder saving the world alone? Or was he just saying that to make sure I stayed on the path of darkness?”

“Do you want to forgive him?”

Sabrina considers Roz’s question for a full minute before she answers. She’s asked herself that question enough.

“I have forgiven him.” She knows the moment in which she forgave Nick. It’s probably not the moment anyone expects, but she knows without a doubt that she made the choice to forgive him in that moment. “But, Roz, I don’t think I can just go back into a relationship with him, not when I don’t trust him, no matter if I love him and have forgiven him.” It hurts to say it. To admit it. “And I’m afraid that I’ll destroy him when he wakes up and figures that out.”

“You have to put yourself first,” Roz advises. “You’ve been through so much. You need time to heal, too.”

“I love him,” she assures Roz. “I never told him, but I do.” She sighs. “He broke my heart, and my trust. But I don’t want to lose him, either.”

It was a tangled web.

“Focus on his waking up first,” Roz says, always with sage advice. “Figure out the rest from there.”

* * *

It’s snowing when he finally manages to pry his eyes apart. He’s been trying for a few days now. It takes him a moment to adjust to the light. He’s only known darkness for so long. He doesn’t know the day or the month or even the year, but he’s not worried about that right now.

He uses all the strength he has to turn his head to the right.

She’s not there.

No one is.

He sighs and lets his eyes fall closed again.

* * *

“Nick.”

She sounds tired today.

Exhausted, really.

He hates the fact that he can’t know for sure. He despises the fact that he can’t do anything about it.

He’s been able to hear her for a while now. The others were muffled, at best, for the longest time, but even when her voice was faint, he could still hear her clearly. Her voice was his beacon, leading him back to where he needed to be. The others were much clearer now, too, but hers was the only voice he listened for. Her voice sounded like home, and he was so tired of being so far from home.

“This is so hard.”

He knows. It’s hard for him, too. Harder, maybe. He has selfish reasons for wanting to just wake up already, but he hates that he’s hurting her. He’s hurt her so much already. He wants to stop hurting her. He’s still causing her pain and he hates it.

“Do you know what I think about a lot?”

If he were able to, he’d hold is breath in anticipation.

“The night of my almost coronation, when you came to my room and asked me to forgive you.” He thinks about that night a lot, too. He constantly questions if he said the right thing, could have said something else, something different, something better. “You had been crying.”

He had. He’s not ashamed to admit it. Her life was falling apart, but his was, too. She hated him and he loved her. He’d betrayed her and even as he asked, he knew she wouldn’t forgive him. But it was more than that. It was a fear of losing her. He had already lost her, of that he was certain, but the Dark Lord wanted her and he couldn’t let that happen. She didn’t deserve that. Not when it was the very last thing she wanted, and the very antithesis of everything she is. And always selfish, he couldn’t face a world without her in it, even if she never so much as looked his way again.

Of course, Hell had been a world without her. But he had saved her from it, and that was all that mattered.

“You said some pretty words, smooth talker that you are.” He would have smiled a little if he could. She was always accusing him of being charming. “And I remember them. But more than that, I remember your bloodshot eyes. I know now, so many months later, that you meant what you said.”

 _Yes,_ he wants to scream. He meant every word and he’ll say them again, and a whole lot more, too, as soon as he can.

“It’s so complicated, to sort out how I feel for you.”

 _I love you,_ he tries to tell her. His lips won’t move. His eyes won’t open. He can only listen.

“I love you.”

His heart stutters.

She loves him!

Lilith, he loves her. He would love her even if she didn’t love him, but to know that she does… He tries again to pry open his eyes. Again, he fails.

“But I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

 _All of it._ He will swear on his grave if that’s where he’s going that everything he said and did was as real as it could possibly be.

“I drive myself crazy sometimes, wondering if you really meant this thing you said or if you did that thing because you wanted to or Satan told you to. How can I love you so much, but trust you so little?”

He begs his eyes to open. He needs to see her. He needs to tell her he understands, and that he will do anything to earn her trust again. He’s no fool. He’s chosen to fall in love with a woman who is as independent and true to herself as she is kind and loyal to the people she loves. She won’t take him back the moment he opens his eyes.

But he _will_ earn her back. If it’s the last thing he does.

“It’s so hard, Nick.” She sounds close to tears.

 _Please don’t cry,_ he pleads. He never wants to make her cry again. Her eyes full of tears because of him is more than he can stand.

“Please, Nick.” She puts her hand over his and it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. At least since the last time she held his hand. Each time is always better than the last. “Wake up so we can figure this out.”

 _I’m trying,_ he promises her. _I’m trying._

* * *

It hurts a little whenever Hilda brings a new bag of whatever she’s been feeding him to keep him alive. It’s the way the line swings a bit, no matter how careful she is, and moves the needle precariously pushed into his veins at his elbow. The place is tender, tired.

Like him.

He needs to let her know he’s there. He waits constantly for someone to come into his room in hopes that this time, he’ll be able to open his eyes and show them that he’s there.

He tells his eyes to open and they actually do his bidding this time. He tries to say something, but his throat is far too dry to make so much as a grunt. He has to wait until she starts to rearrange his blankets for her to notice.

“Nicholas!” she cries out. “You’re awake! Oh, dear, it’s about time.”

She fusses over him for what feels like an eternity. He finds he’s still incredibly weak. There’s little he can do to resist and it takes all he has in him to find a way to communicate that he wants water. She bustles out of the room and returns so fast he wonders if it only occurred to her in the hallway that she is a witch and can conjure a glass from thin air.

She has to conjure a straw and then hold the cup for him, but the cool water soothes his bone dry throat. She refills it and he drinks that, too. He tries to say something, but there are so many things he wants to say all at once that he can’t settle on any one thing. It all feels blurry around the edges, surreal. Like it might not be happening at all.

He almost panics for a moment wondering if all of this is a terrible dream, that he’s still trapped in Hell with Lucifer. But he thinks of Sabrina and knows it can’t be a nightmare. It has to be real. Angels like her - and he’s seen enough demons to know she is, in fact, an angel - don’t exist in places like Hell.

“Don’t try to do too much too soon, dear,” HIlda directs. “You’ve still got a long way to go.”

 _You have no idea,_ he thinks.

“Sabrina will be so relieved. She’s been so worried.” She notes the way a little flicker of light appears in his tired eyes at the mention of her niece. “She’s at the Academy, but shall I pop over and get her? I’m sure Zelda won’t mind me pulling her out of class for this.”

He manages a single nod.

Hilda disappears.

His hands start to shake a bit. Nerves. He’s going to see her - actually see her - soon. He’s prayed for and dreaded this moment in equal parts. What should he say to her? What should he do? What does she _want_ him to say? But most importantly, what does she need? That’s what matters now - what Sabrina needs.

It’s just a few minutes before Hilda is back - with Sabrina.

“Nick!”

She’s there. She’s at his side, her hands on his face, his arms, his chest, everywhere, asking if he’s okay, if he’s in pain, if he needs anything. It’s overwhelming and he doesn’t have a lot of control over his body. He can’t figure out what to say, but he finds he can’t even say her name. His throat is still dry, his muscles feel dead from lack of use. He can’t do _anything._ His eyes fill with frustrated tears.

“What hurts?” she asks, noticing the tears. “What can I do?”

He bows his head. Ashamed. Angry. Frustrated. He’s too weak to pick up his own damned hand and comfort her. He’s too confused to say anything. He’s just so damned _weak._

“Nick?” she prompts.

“Sabrina, darling,” Hilda’s voice fills the air, “I think you might be overwhelming him.”

She doesn’t pull away, but he feels her energy shift to caution.

“Has he said anything?” she asks her aunt.

“He’s still very weak.” Hilda says gently. “He’s had a bit of water, but I imagine a bit more wouldn’t hurt. Perhaps some broth, too. Why don’t you go down to the kitchen and get him a glass and a bowl of chicken broth while I finish looking him over?”

She puts up only a minor protest.

“She’s just worried,” Hilda soothes, not understanding why he’s so upset. “Relieved, too.” She artfully stacks a few pillows to allow him to sit up a bit. “You know how she is, always worked up about this or that.” _She’s passionate,_ he wants to say. He loves that about her. “I expect you’ll want to go back to sleep soon. I want you to try and have some broth though, if you can. We need to get your strength up. I’m keeping you on a liquid diet until you’re a bit stronger.”

He manages the slightest of nods. It’s like his body has completely betrayed him.

“You’re going to be fine, Nicholas,” she promises him. “Just focus on getting well for now. The rest has plenty of time to be worried about.”

Another barely nod.

Sabrina returns with a glass of water and a steaming bowl of broth.

“I’m going to mix up a potion that will help perk you up a bit,” Hilda says. “Have some of the broth before you go back to sleep and when you wake up again, I’ll give you a dose of potion.”

He sees Sabrina’s eyebrows furrow at the mention of sleep, but she hides it quickly. She perches next to him.

“Broth?” she asks.

It seems he’s used up his nod allotment.

She brings a spoon to his lips. It takes him a few tries to fully remember how to eat. She’s uncharacteristically quiet as she feeds him in patient spoonfuls. He diligently eats every bite, even though he felt full long ago, as eager to make her happy as he is to regain function of his body so he can start making amends. When it’s gone, she helps him sip water through a straw.

He thinks he might feel a little better.

But he’s so tired.

His eyes get heavy again and there’s no stopping them despite what he wants. She removes a couple of the pillows Hilda stacked to recline him. She’s as gentle as if she were holding a newborn.

“Rest,” she whispers. She presses the faintest of kisses to his temple. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Her hand is near his.

It takes every last ounce of energy he has, but he manages to lift his pinkie finger and touch her hand. It’s enough to bring her to tears.

He hopes it tells her enough to get her through the night.

* * *

“Sabrina!”

He starts to wake.

“Auntie? What are you doing in here? I thought you were asleep?”

“I wanted to check on Nick one more time before I turned in,” Hilda’s voice fills the space. “What are _you_ doing in here? I thought Salem tucked you into bed?”

There’s a heavy silence that tells Nick something isn’t quite right. He manages to open his eyes. It takes a few moments to adjust to the darkness, but he finds her white blonde hair and neither she nor Hilda are looking at him.

“I just.... Sabrina sighed. “He finally woke up, Auntie. What if… What if he falls back asleep and doesn’t wake up again?”

“Oh, love.” HIlda envelopes her in a motherly hug. She opens her mouth to offer more words of comfort, but sees Nick’s eyes, a bit dazed but open, watching them. She smiles a bit. “I know that’s a very real fear for you, but fortunately, I don’t think it’s one you have to worry about. At least not tonight.”

She releases her niece and turns her to face Nick. He watches her eyes light up.

“Nick!”

“Sa…” Mother of Lilith, he’s going to say her name this time, weakness be damned. “Brina.”

Her eyes fill with tears. He closes his eyes for a moment, hating that she’s crying again, over him, again. When he opens them, she’s sitting there looking like the angel she is and he suddenly has enough strength to move his hand to rest on her knee. She covers it with her own.

“Do you need anything?” she asks. “Are you in any pain?”

“I’m… Okay…”

Neither of them know what to say now. They just study one another, hoping to find all the answers in the other’s eyes.

“You... should... sleep...” he says after a few minutes. He’s taken detailed notes of the deep dark circles under her eyes. The words come out slow and oh so shaky, but they come out, and that’s all he’s really after right now.

“I will.”

She makes no move to do so.

“Sleep,” he says again. “Please.”

The ‘please’ threatens to do her in.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she says truthfully.

“Lay... down...” He tries to move his body to make room for her, but of course it doesn’t move. All the same, she lays down beside him. He silently curses his body for not moving at his command. He wants to put his arms around her. He wants to hold her.

Body heat will have to do.

“Are you sure you don’t need anything?” she asks through the dark.

“I’m... sure...”

“Are you in pain?”

_Yes._

But that’s not the pain she’s asking about.

“No.”

It takes her a long time to fall asleep. When she does, her hand has found itself on his chest. He knows she’s making sure he keeps breathing. She has nothing to worry about though, he thinks. His heart will beat as long as she’s next to him.

* * *

His strength returns over the next several days.

He’s able to stay awake in longer and longer stretches. His body starts to respond a little quicker to his commands. The day he’s able to grab Sabrina’s hand and hold it is one he silently celebrates. He has no idea she’s celebrating too as she thinks back to the first day, when she picked up his cold, limp hand and felt nothing.

His first steps in months are pathetic. Between the sleep Ambrose put him in and the fact that he’s been out flat in a bed for weeks, his muscles seem to have withered and died. He’s grateful Sabrina isn’t there to witness them.

“You’ve come so far,” Hilda soothes as she helps him back to bed. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

He insists on trying later that day. It still doesn’t go well, but within the week, he’s able to take small, measured steps on his own, and soon he’s making laps around the small room. The day he attempts the stairs, everyone holds their breath, but Sabrina stays near and he uses her arm to steady him. He makes it down, has a proper dinner at the table with the Spellmans, and even goes out on the porch for a bit. It’s frigid, but he doesn’t care. The fresh air fills his lungs and makes him feel alive. It’s that moment when he realizes he truly is alive - and that there’s no time to waste.

That’s when the questions start.

“How long was I in Hell?” he asks Hilda one day.

She’s not surprised he doesn’t remember.

“Six months and some days,” she supplies. “Sabrina can tell you down to the hour.”

“How long was I unresponsive here?” he continues.

“It took two months almost exactly for you to open your eyes.”

“And it’s been what, six weeks since then?”

Hilda is curious about his questioning.

“Closer to two months, love.”

“So that means it’s…” He tries to remember what month it was when he went to hell. Lupercalia was in February. They had a few weeks of bliss - school, dates, making out in dark corners of the Academy or Dorian’s after the bourbon started to sink into their blood. “January?”

“February, dear. End of. It was April when you went into Hell.”

February.

He went to Hell into April.

He thinks through all the things he’s missed.

Summer Solstice.

Sabrina’s Birthday.

That mortal Thanksgiving holiday she loved so much.

Winter Solstice.

New Year’s.

Lupercalia.

Valentine’s Day.

How in the Heaven had he missed Valentine’s Day? It was a dumb mortal holiday, but Sabrina loved it, and even though he had no idea where he stood with her, he would have done _something_ somehow to show her how much he loved her. Appreciated her. Would go back to Hell for her.

But her _birthday._ She’d had a disastrous 16th birthday, all things considered. He’d long ago decided he would make sure her 17th birthday was far better. So instead, he, of course, had messed it all up by being passed out in Ambrose’s bed, fresh from Hell, while she worried over whether he would ever come back to her. He feels like he can’t do anything right, not where Sabrina is concerned.

“You’re back with us now,” Hilda says, sensing where his line of thought is going. “You’ve got all the time in the world ahead of you. Benefits of being a warlock.”

“I suppose,” he agrees.

She leaves him to his books. She hasn’t released him from her care just yet - he thinks she’s being overprotective and overly cautionary now but she won’t hear him out - but he’s started studying again, for something to do if nothing else. Cassius sends him books - he’s thankful he survived Father Blackwell - and he devours them. There’s a part of him that’s eager to get back to school, back to whatever is left of the Academy. Back to some sense of normalcy.

He doesn’t study today, though. He tries. He opens up a book on ruins and re-reads the same paragraph several times over.

It’s Sabrina he’s thinking about.

She’s distant. He sees her in the mornings - he’s careful to make sure he’s at the breakfast table to see her before she goes about her day - and again in the evenings, but sometimes it’s just for a few minutes, when she checks in on how he’s feeling or gives him the latest books from Cassius. Other times, its longer. She’ll sit and tell him about her day, or maybe what she did with her friends, or pass along an update on Ambrose and Prudence and their never ending search for Blackwood.

He likes those days. He wishes there were more of them. But they seem to be growing fewer and fewer between, and he’s not sure how to draw her back to him. He’s not sure of much when it comes to her, except that he loves her, more now than he ever has.

She finds him on the back porch that night.

“What are you doing out here?” she asks, joining him at the railing he’s been leaning on for a long time. “It’s freezing out, Nick. Let’s go inside.”

“After Hell, the cold feels good.”

He’s started to remember what happened inside of him while he held Lucifer. He didn’t at first, and for that he is grateful. His poor excuse of a physical form was enough to know it had been bad. But as his strength returned, the memories did, too, and they tear away at what little soul he feels he has left now. He doubts he would have progressed this far if he remembered right away.

“I guess that makes sense.”

It is bitterly cold, snowing, too. A late season blizzard is moving in and this is only the beginning. It’s as good of a time as any to ask her the question that’s been weighing on his mind for a while now.

“How?”

She looks at him, that curious expression he loves so much plan on her face.

“How what?”

“How did you get me out? I went to Hell intending to stay there.”

There’s a hint of anger in his voice that makes her frown.

“Are you upset that we rescued you?”

He sighs.

It’s complicated, how he feels. He’s not sure he understands it himself.

“I did what I did to protect you, and yet you still stormed the gates of Hell and risked your life.”

“I wasn’t going to leave you there,” she informs him. “That was never an option.”

“I didn’t want - I don’t want - you to risk your life for me, Sabrina. Not then, not now, not in the future, no matter what evil tide befalls us next. It was a stupid thing you did, risking your life for mine.”

“You’re making me wish I’d left you in there,” she states, even though she doesn’t mean it. “You didn’t save me, Nicholas Scratch. You saved the world.”

“I don’t care about…”

“The world,” Sabrina finishes. “That doesn’t change the fact that your sacrifice saved it.” She pauses for a moment, realizing she has to explain something so complex she still doesn’t fully understand it herself. “Or that your willingness to do it is what ultimately helped bring you back to this side of the gate.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dante was right about Hell,” she tells him.

 _“Inferno,_ ” Nick supplies. He’s read the epic. Three times. Before he ever knew Sabrina.

“He detailed exactly how Hell is laid out, ring by ring, layer by layer. _Inferno_ was the map. The Book of the False God was the guidebook.”

“How?” Nick asks again.

“In the Book of Revelations, Satan is thrown into the Abyss for a thousand years.”

“Which is where I was.” He knows this to be the utter truth.

“Right,” Sabrina nods. “In Revelations, when he’s set free, he goes to war against the righteous. You kept him from getting free.” She hesitates, not sure how Nick will react to the next part. He’s in a mood that’s taken her by surprise and she’s not sure how to proceed. “You protected the righteous.”

He says nothing. He protected _her._ The rest - the righteous if she wants to call them that - only benefited from his devotion to _her._

“In the Book of the False God, Satan is defeated by fire from Heaven and tossed into the Lake of Fire where he’s left to eternal pain as punishment for his sins. It took me a while to piece it all together.” She pauses again, thinking of how many times she had wished Nick was there - he was the one that could put the information together quickly when they were looking for answers. “But I realized that by being baptised into both churches, I could walk between Heaven and Hell.

“I thought back to the night of the Greendale 13, when I called fire from Hell. If I could do that, I thought, with my new powers, maybe I could call it from Heaven, too. All I had to do was go into Hell, find you, pull Lucifer out of you, and call down heavenly fire.”

“All you had to do?” Nick repeats. “Sabrina…” He sighs at her cavalier explanation. “Please tell me you were certain this would work before you opened the gates.” Her silence tells him what he already knows. “I thought it would work,” she offers after a few moments, “because you saved the righteous. And it did.” She pauses again, conflicted herself on how she feels about the next part, given what she is and her membership to the Church of Lilith. “The False God recognized your sacrifice, Nick. He allowed me to call the fire down - because of what you did.”

Nick shakes his head, hardly able to believe anything she’s saying.

“I’m no saint, Sabrina.” He was the furthest thing from it.

“You’re most certainly not,” she agrees with just a hint of a smirk. “But you sacrificed yourself to save mankind and that won you favor to get you out of Hell. And now, Lucifer will burn in the Lake of Fire for all of eternity. Lilith was all too happy to preside over it.”

“Were you alone?” he asks.

“Mostly.”

“Mostly?

“Harvey, Theo, and Roz helped to a point. They opened the gates, kept them open, and held back the demons that tried to escape. My aunties helped them, although I’m not sure they wanted to.”

“But you went into Hell alone.”

“Lilith met me at the gate. She couldn’t help me, but she walked with me.”

“What did you face, Sabrina?”

“Nick…” She doesn’t want to relive it.

“Tell me, Sabrina.”

“The first circle is Limbo,” she starts, knowing she has no choice. She’s absolutely chilled to the bone, but she makes no move to go inside, nor does she suggest it. There’s something working through Nick’s mind and she’s a little afraid of it so she stays put to answer his questions, hoping it helps him with whatever he’s processing. “My mom was there.”

Her small voice when she says it tells Nick all he needs to know about how that affected her. He fights the urge to comfort her.

“I had to leave her there. Lilith says she’s there by choice, that she knew when she fell in love with my dad that Heaven wouldn’t take her and it’s a sacrifice she willingly made for love. Even still, it was hard to keep walking past her.” She smiles sadly. “The castle she lives in is beautiful, though. Socrates and Homer are there. I like to think she has intellectual company, at least.”

“And then came Lust,” Nick says, moving the story along even though he knows she wants to linger there, think of her mother.

“Lust is the second circle,” Sabrina confirms. “Because I’m a virgin, that was the easiest one to get through. Not that I wasn’t - tempted.” She sees Nick’s hands tighten around the bannister. They had come close, more than once. She didn’t tell him that it was his voice that tempted her through the circle. “It was so windy there. The wind keeps those punished for lust from finding peace.” She pauses to remember how she fought to keep upright, keep walking forward, as the wind pushed her around, carrying the sound of Nick’s voice, tempting her, begging her.

“The third circle was gluttony. There was slush produced by an icy rain. I had to use a charm to keep myself dry, but I had to remember…” she trails off for just a moment. “All the selfish things I’ve done.”

He wonders what Sabrina could have possibly done in her life that would be considered selfish. As for himself, he’s not sure whether he would have been punished as lustful or a glutton. He certainly had both sins on his resume.

“And the fourth circle?” he prompts.

“Greed,” she answers. “There are two groups that spend their days jousting one another using heavy weights as their weapons that they push with their chests to represent the fortunes and possessions they chased and spent. The only way through was between them. I’ve never ran faster in my life, and still barely made it through.” She palms her wrist, thinking of how she fell as she crossed to the other side of the circle and felt her wrist snap when she landed. The pain was blinding, but she didn’t stop moving.

“We had to cross the fifth circle, anger, by boat. Phlegyas ferried us across. Those being punished for the sin fought violently in the water. They tried to pull me in, drown me.” She nearly doesn’t tell Nick the next part, but she does anyway, because it feels like he needs to know. “I fell in. I nearly drowned. Phlegyas and Lilith couldn’t help me. I had to fight the sin on my own.” Only her desire to get to Nick had kept her from allowing them to take her under the water.

Nick crosses his arms over his chest, but she knows it’s not from cold. It’s because he’s upset with her for putting her life at risk, and because he doesn’t like what he hears.

“Sixth circle?

He knows it’s only going to get worse.

“Heresy,” she supplies. “Those who are there are entrapped in fire tombs for their objections to orthodox religion. There was a tomb with my name on it. They tried to drag me in. I had to fight.” She had been burned. Badly. There was a scar on her abdomen that Hilda hadn’t been able to fully heal. “That’s where my dad was, too.”

There’s another pause, another moment in which she recalls seeing Edward Spellman, burning, but urging her on, surrounded by people she thought she should know but couldn’t place, all encouraging her. She continues.

“Violence, the seventh circle, was terrible. It’s divided into three rings. I had to go through them all. The outer ring houses murderers and those who have hurt people and property. Alexander the Great tried to kill me, but I managed to get away. The middle ring was suicide.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head, trying to shake away the memories. “They tried to convince me to kill myself.” She will never tell him she nearly did. “The inner ring was blasphemers and sodomites in a desert of burning sand with burning rain falling.” More burns to her skin.

“This whole thing was a suicide mission,” Nick mutters. He doesn’t intend for her to hear. She hears it anyway. It stings, the fact that he’s upset with her for saving him. “And eight?”

“Fraud. We flew on the back of Geryon to get there. There was a Bolgia for sorcerers. They tried to keep me, too.” Another injury. Her ankle this time. By the time she reached the last circle, she could barely walk. “I found you in the ninth circle.”

“Treachery,” Nick supplies. “The worst of the sinners.”

“It was so cold, Nick. Infinitely colder than this.” He knows she’s freezing, but he can’t bring himself to suggest they go inside. This is the most she’s said to him in weeks and he needs to know all of it. “You were kept in the deepest ring. The fourth ring.

“Judecca.” Named after Judas, the apostle that betrayed Jesus.

“It was the most complex magic I’ve ever done in my life, releasing the Dark Lord from you and then, with only moments to work with, calling out to a Heaven that I only hoped knew my name. But somehow, it worked. I got to bring you back.” She smiles just a little. “Lilith could help me on the way back. She even carried you.”

A heavy silence falls between them, made heavier by the falling snow and the increasing winds. She waits. He thinks.

“Go inside, Sabrina,” he finally says. “You’ve been out here far too long.”

“Nick…”

“You’re freezing,” he says, sterner this time. “Go warm up.”

She stands her ground. Of course she does.

“I don’t understand,” she says with a shake of her head. “Why are you so mad at me?”

He breathes out a long sigh. It forms in crystals in the cold air between them.

“You risked your life,” he says again. “Your life for mine, Sabrina. That’s not what I wanted.”

“So you’d prefer to be down there, with the Dark Lord, rather than up here, with me?”

“That’s not… No. I want to be wherever you are. Always.” She shifts nervously from one foot to the other. It’s the first time either of them have mentioned any hint of a relationship between them since he woke up. She has no idea what they even are now. They aren’t friends. They’re so much more than that. But she isn’t his girlfriend, either. “But if I had a choice in the matter, I would have stayed there to keep you from putting yourself through nine circles of torture, just to save someone who didn’t deserve it in the first place.”

She thinks, maybe, she understands a little more. And that wherever Nick is in his mind right now, its deeper than just her. It’s that broken thing in him, tugging at him, making him struggle with emotions and feelings even the most self-assured person would have a hard time deciphering. She wants to help him, but she doesn’t know how.

“You deserve to be with us,” she tells him. She is steadfast in that belief. “And I was miserable without you, Nick. Selfish as it may have been, I wanted you back here for me, just as much as I wanted you back because you didn’t belong there.”

He looks at her and she sees all the questions she has reflected in his own eyes.

“You don’t trust me.”

He knows it to be true.

“It’s complicated…”

“I know.”

They look at one another, trying to decide what happens next.

“Go inside, Sabrina,” he says. “You don’t need to be out here anymore.”

“Nick…”

“You’re freezing, Sabrina.” He’s pushing her away and he knows it, but he needs some space right now.” I’ll be in later.”

Her eyes fill with tears and he has to look away because here she is, crying because of him, yet again. It must be a full minute before she moves. At the door, she turns back to him.

“I saved you because I love you,” she says so softly she has to rely on the increasing blizzard winds to carry the message to him. “That has to matter.”

It’s salve to his wounds, to hear her say that.

It’s a knife, twisted in his chest.

* * *

She’s furious.

She’s had all evening and all night to think about it, and she is furious. Beyond furious. She’s not even sure what the name is for how she feels. All she sees is blind rage when she bursts into Ambrose’s room without so much as a warning knock.

“Nicholas Scratch, I’ve had enough of you!”

He’s too surprised at her abrupt entry to reply. Not that she would have given him a chance. He struggles to sit upright in bed as she rails. It’s early, still dark out, and he was asleep. It’s still snowing. He’d bet his life she never went to bed after their confrontation on the porch. He tries to prepare himself, certain she’s got quite the speech worked out.

“You made me fall in love with you,” she informs him. “I knew better. I knew you were trouble. But you were there and you were saying the right things, doing the right things. You made me think they were wrong - that you weren’t the absolute playboy you were made out to be, that you really did want things to be different, for our world to be inclusive and better. Every time you kissed my forehead, I let go of some of my doubts. Every time you showed up in my bedroom, astrally or otherwise, I let your sweet words and seemingly genuine affection sway me a little more. I let myself fall in love with you, the very same warlock I caught in an orgy in my attic!

“But then I found out it was all a lie…”

“No,” he interjects. “It wasn’t…”

“Yes, it was!” she erupts. “You were doing the Dark Lord’s bidding! You were making me fall for you because he told you to. It was a game for you - get the half breed to fall in love with me, win the Dark Lord’s favor…”

“Sabrina…”

“I’m talking!” she snaps. “You broke my heart, Nicholas Scratch. You made me fall in love with you - believe in you! - and then you pulled the rug out from under me.”

She wipes violently at her eyes to try to stop the tears. They are too many. He stands on shaky legs. They’re not shaking because he’s weak, though. They’re shaking because he sees where this is going, and he’s powerless to stop it. They’ve been plowing towards this moment since she stepped through the gates of Hell with him. It’s a wonder it took this long to get here.

“Please, let me…”

“Explain?” she supplies. “No! You don’t get to explain! You get to listen, Nicholas, because I’m not finished! I thought, maybe, when you showed up in my bedroom the night of the coronation that you were being genuine. That you meant it when you said you really did fall in love with me. But you’ve lied to me for so long! How can I believe that?

“And I know you went to Hell so I didn’t have to. You saved the world, and that means everything. But I saved you because I love you and think you deserve to be on this side of Hell. Yet you seem to want to be right back in the ninth circle.”

“No.” He takes a step towards her, but she takes a step back. He stops. “I don’t want…”

“Is it because you want to be with the Dark Lord?”

She’s spiraling and they both know it. They both know there’s no way to stop her until she crashes. All he can do is wait and hope and pray he can not only pick up the pieces, but put them back together again.

He has to put them back together again.

“Is your devotion to him so strong, so damned important to you, that you would rather be in Hell with him living inside of you than be here? I went through Hell - actual Hell - to get to you and try as I may, right now, in this moment, I don’t know why. You lied to me. You led me on. You betrayed me. You pretended to be in love with me, for Lilith’s sake! All rationale says I should have left you there…”

“Exactly!”

He’s the one with the outburst this time. He catches her off guard just enough that he gets a chance to continue this time.

“I did every last thing you accused me of. I won’t deny it, and I claim them all. Except for one.” He makes sure to look her in the eye. “I did not - ever - pretend to be in love with you. I have only ever loved you more than I have loved anyone or anything. I will not allow you to question that. But I do think you should have left me in Hell. Because if I were in Hell, you wouldn’t have risked your life for mine. You wouldn’t be standing here questioning everything…”

“Yes I would!” she interrupts. “I have questioned every single moment we spent together since you confessed!”

“The day I gave you your father’s journal.”

She looks confused at the sudden change in topic.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“That’s the day he asked me to get close to you.”

It’s a sucker punch to the gut. She didn’t realize until right now that she had thought the ask came much later. That at least most of their relationship had happened in due course. She’s wrong and it hurts more than she could have imagined.

He takes advantage of her shocked silence.

“He knew I had fallen for you. He knew that I wanted you. He played on the most vulnerable part of me.” He hesitates. He’s about to risk it all, show every card he has ever had, but it’s the only way. “He knew how desperate I was to be loved, having grown up without parents, a familiar for a mother figure. I told you, early on, that I admired how mortals could devote themselves to one person. I thought, long before he asked, that maybe, you could devote yourself to me. And I to you. I never intended for things to be this way.”

“How do I believe that?” Sabrina asks. She wants him to tell her, because she is utterly lost.

He’s been through a lot of pain, physical and emotional, in the last year. But nothing hurts as much as what he knows he has to do now. He’s been thinking about this for a while now, knew it would come to this. It’s the right thing, even if it’s the hardest thing. It’s what she needs, and that’s what’s important to him - her.

And if he’s as honest with himself as he needs to be, he needs this too.

“You don’t.”

Her confusion deepens. He continues.

“You don’t trust me. I understand that. You don’t believe me. I understand that, too. And no matter what I say, you won’t believe the way I feel about you is true, always has been.” _Always will be,_ he adds to himself. “We can’t do this, this half in, half out thing that we’re doing. We have to move on.” He braces himself. He survived Hell, but he’s not sure he can survive this. “We need to go our separate ways, Sabrina. You need space, time to figure out who you are.” He takes a breath to steady his resolve. “And I need to do the same.”

He doesn’t offer her any other explanation.

“Nick…”

She’s not sure what’s happening. She didn’t exactly have a plan when she burst in, aside from screaming at him to try and get - somewhere. Now, he’s effectively breaking up with her, though they’ve been apart for months.

“It’s the right thing to do.” He has to work to keep his voice steady. “I have a lot…” he trails off and doesn’t finish the thought. “You’ll be okay,” he promises. Because she will be. She’s stronger than anyone he knows, witch or mortal. He takes a big breath. He’s not sure what she’ll do, but he has to do it. It’s his last selfish act where she’s concerned. He steps forward and puts a hand on her arm. She notes how warm it is. His lips graze her cheek, featherlight. “I love you, Sabrina.”

And then he’s gone.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that they've gone their separate ways, shall we find out what they've been up to? And perhaps find out what happens when they come back together.

> _I wonder how you treasure what anyone would call a flaw  
>  You say a pearl without the pressure wouldn't be a pearl at all  
> When my demons come a-callin', you don't even bat an eye  
> I don't scare you, and I guess that's why_

It’s horrible at first.

She alternates between deep bouts of sadness and high peaks of rage. How could he just walk away like that? After all they’ve been through… Damn him right back to Hell! Why does she miss him so much? How could she miss him at all, after everything? Her mood swings drive even her crazy.

Slowly, she starts to even out. The days become no longer “good” or “bad” but merely - days. She’s in the moment more. She’s with her friends more. School keeps her busier and busier. It’s a lot, juggling both mortal and Academy work, but without other worldly threats to distract her, she finds she enjoys the challenge of doing both.

She even tries to date. A mortal boy, new in town, grabs her attention. She knows its a risk, given what she is and what has happened before, but she tries, because she has to. She’s not with Nick anymore. Hasn’t been in a long time. It’s time to move on, give someone else a chance.

He’s nice enough. He doesn’t hold her hand as often as she’d like, and he doesn’t quite vibe with her friends, especially Theo, who he struggles to understand. She gives the guy credit for trying, and forever admires Theo’s courage, patience, and dedication to helping others accept those different from them, but it’s when he kisses her that she knows he’s not the one for her. It’s a basic kiss, textbook perfect. But it lacks that extra something special. That something she’s only ever felt with…

She still wonders about him in quiet moments. Where is he? What’s he doing? How is he? As much as she hates to think about it, who is he with? But he stops consuming her every thought and she starts to see that he was right. They needed to go their separate ways. She’s learning who she is, what she wants, what she deserves. And wherever he is, she hopes he’s doing the same.

Ambrose and Prudence return victorious just in time for Summer Solstice. They’re carrying Father Blackwood’s head and pushing a cart with Leticia and Jude, as they’ve taken to calling him, tucked safely inside. Zelda is beside herself at being reunited with the twins. Hilda and Sabrina are simply happy to have everyone home whole.

“How did you finally find Blackwood?” Sabrina asks Ambrose, sitting with him in the parlor, sharing a pot of tea. Prudence has disappeared to visit with her sisters and the aunts haven’t time for Ambrose, not when there are babies to bath and deem healthy and cuddle. They’ll get the full story later.

Ambrose seems a bit nervous.

“We had help,” he says carefully.

“Another Coven?” Sabrina assumes.

“Not exactly.” She raises an eyebrow, urging him to continue. “Nicholas helped us.”

“Nick?” She repeats. She leans forward, eager for news of him.

“It was kismet, really, crossing paths with him in the Unholy Land. We were catching up over drinks and we told him a bit about what we knew. He filled in some gaps and, well, no one can disagree that he’s a powerful warlock. He got us to Blackwood. I took the first blow, but I gave Prudence the honors of finishing him off.”

“How is he?” she asks. “Nick, I mean?” She’s almost afraid of the answer.

“He’s - resolute,” Ambrose tells her. “In what, I’m not sure, but he has a purpose, whatever it is.” He pours himself some more tea. “We asked him to come home with us - Jude took a special sort of liking to him in the couple of days we were all together - but he said he couldn’t.”

“So, he’s in the Unholy Land?” Sabrina clarifies.

“Is, was, I’m not sure. He didn’t tell us much about what he’s been up to, but it seems he’s been on the move, keeping busy.”

“Did he - say anything else?” She hates that her cousin has come home safely from a dangerous mission and all she can think to ask is whether her ex-boyfriend mentioned her.

“He didn’t mention you specifically, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She’s crestfallen. “He did ask about the family.”

“Sabrina!” Zelda’s voice rings through the house. “Come look at Leticia in your old dress!”

“I suppose I should be glad they have two someones to occupy them now so I might get a break from all their attention,” she says as she stands. “I’m glad you’re home, Ambrose. It was too quiet without you.”

 _It’s too quiet without Nick,_ a small voice says.

She ignores it.

* * *

Later that night, she’s studying for a history exam. It usually amuses her, that the Academy requires them to attend history classes, right along with things like demonology and conjuring. Tonight, it seems the universe is having a laugh. The pages of her text are about the Unholy Land, the wars fought, the demons banished.

All she can think about is Nick, now that she’s had word of him.

She gives up and decides to soak in her tub.

It doesn’t help.

Nick used this very tub to find her father’s manifesto. He risked his life and performed quite the feat of magic to go for a swim in the name of a book they only hoped survived a plane crash and years at the bottom of the ocean. Had it done that for the Dark Lord? Or for her?

He saved her from Adam in this tub. Pulled out Lilith’s rib and made sure she was safe. But surely anyone would try to save another, right? He was doing what anyone would do.

He came to her room the night of the angel attack, solemn and a little insecure. He had been threatened by her relationship, past and present, with Harvey, had wanted her to know he would have been there if only he’d been able to access the church. When she had assured him she knew he’d be there, he had kissed her for a while, her hair damp, her robe still on, but ultimately just held her, close and almost desperate. She remembers now, waking up in the middle of the night and finding him still there, wide awake, her under her covers, him on top of them, his hand resting on her as though to make sure she was still breathing. She had smiled to herself and fallen back asleep, him oblivious that she had ever woken up. Now, she thinks maybe he really was making sure she was still breathing. She certainly knows what it’s like, to sit by the side of someone you love and wait for them to wake up.

She wonders if he was genuine in his insecurities that night, or else simply worried the Dark Lord would punish him if she ended up back with the mortal.

They had fought earlier that day. He had been upset about being expelled and she had admittedly gone back to her mortal world without much thought as to how he was coping. She thinks, now, that she saw that side of him he mentioned that last day in Ambrose’s room - the side that only wanted to be loved. The Academy was his home, and it was gone.

That same small voice that told her it was too quiet without Nick reminds her he could have just as easily been reeling from a scolding from the Dark Lord for allowing her to skip back to the mortal side of her being.

She thinks of other times she may have seen that vulnerable side of him.

When he told her about Amalia, pacing Lilith’s small office in small, quick footsteps, talking fast.

Certainly when he broke down in the woods after her death. She had hated leaving him in the dormitory that night. She wishes she would have made him come home with her.

The night of the party, when he asked where he fit into her vision for a new world. Or was that more fear that he wasn’t doing Satan’s bidding justice?

His bloodshot, glassy eyes the night of the coronation.

It’s those wet, sad eyes she can never quite dismiss.

And the way he yelled “Absolutely not!” when she stepped forward as the vessel for Satan, his voice ringing louder than the rest.

The “I love you, Spellman. You taught me how to love.”

As the space between them grows more distant each day, it becomes harder to believe Nick had ever lied about loving her.

She sinks deeper into the bath water. Salem meows.

“I know,” she admits. “I love him, too.”

* * *

She knows something is going on at the mortuary by the sound of Jude’s shrieks of laughter that carry on the light breeze as she walks through the woods towards home. He’s the quieter twin, content to let his sister take the spotlight. He likes books and the little wood toys that Hilda produced from the attic. While Leticia has flourished with the Spellmans as she approaches two years old, all frilly dresses and impromptu dance recitals, Jude has taken longer to come around, embrace their newfound freedom. She’s curious about what has him out of the house, laughing like a toddler should.

She stops in her tracks.

There, chasing Jude around the graveyard, is none other than Nicholas Scratch.

She stands rooted to her spot, as though a witch’s stake has been driven through her foot, completely unable to decipher any one of the thoughts running through her mind into something she can understand. He’s there, in the flesh, dressed in his signature black, dodging around a headstone and pretending that he can’t catch Jude whose toddler legs only take him but so fast.

Jude sees her first.

“Sabby!”

He runs to her, and she’s too distracted by not being knocked down by the suddenly rambunctious toddler that she misses the way Nick’s face lights up when he realizes she’s there. He’s careful to pull a neutral mask on before she sees.

“Look, Sabby!” Jude cries as she lifts him into her arms. She teases her aunts and Ambrose for their attachment to the twins, but she’s rather fond of them herself, especially Jude. “Nick!” He jabs his stubby finger in Nick’s direction.

“I see,” she says to Jude. “Is that your friend?”

“Friend!” Jude exclaims, learning a new word.

Sabrina has no choice but to look at Nick now.

“Hi,” she says, a bit breathy.

“Hi,” he replies, guarded and careful. He watches her shoulders rise and fall as she takes a deep, steadying breath. He wishes he could do the same, but the ability to breathe seems to have escaped him.

“You’re back.”

“I am,” he confirms. “Or, I may be, I suppose is the better answer.”

“Oh?” She’s not sure what he means.

“Zelda summoned me. She has an ‘opportunity’ she wants to discuss.”

“I see.”

“Sabby, down!” Jude demands.

“Here you go,” she obliges.

“I get Nick!” Jude takes a run at him. Nick easily swings the boy off his feet and tosses him in the air, producing a squeal of laughter. Sabrina takes it all in, unable to forget how weak Nick had been in those first days, how even the morning he left, he wasn’t as strong as he should have been. Now, he’s throwing a toddler into the air. He fills out his clothes, has color to his cheeks. He’s even a bit tan. He looks well. Healthy.

“Not so fast,” he says when Jude is safely back in his arms. “I’ve got to go talk to your aunt Zelda. We’ll play again later.”

“Promise?” Jude asks.

“I swear it,” Nick confirms. He puts the boy down and ruffles his hair. Zelda calls Nick’s name from the porch. “I should…”

Sabrina nods.

“Come on, Jude,” she takes the boy by the hand. “Let’s you and I sneak a cookie before dinner.” Jude follows her, but grabs Nick’s hand, too, content and happy to be with two of his favorite people at the same time. It’s Sabrina that has to remember to breathe this time, because this is a scene not unlike the ones far into the future she would allow herself to daydream about in the days when it was just her and Nick and no Dark Lords or prophecies.

Inside, Zelda dutifully ignores Sabrina’s questioning looks as she wipes a bit of dirt from Jude’s face and has Nick follow her to her study. Sabrina finds Letecia, deciding it only fair to give them both a cookie, and settles them at the table to ruin their dinner before she marches down to the morgue.

“Why is Nick here?” she demands.

“You couldn’t have stormed down here five minutes earlier?” Ambrose counters from where he works on a cadaver. “Prudence and I have a bet on how long it would take you to rage about it, and now I’ve lost because you dallied.”

“Answer the question.” She crosses her arms and waits impatiently. “And I’m not raging. I’m merely curious as to why my ex-boyfriend has suddenly reappeared in Greendale.”

“Zelda summoned him.”

“I already know that. Why?”

“Something she wants him to do at the Academy, most likely.” He systematically sews up the chest cavity of the mortal lying on his table. “I’ve made it a point to stay out of things that don’t involve me after the whole Blackwood fiasco.”

“That’ll last two seconds,” Sabrina scoffs. He would deny it, but Ambrose loves to be in the middle of the action. “How long has Nick been here?”

“Long enough for Hilda to reprimand him for his abrupt departure and feed him a slice of cake. And then Jude woke up from a nap and whisked dear Nicholas off for a game of chase.”

“What could Aunt Zelda want or need him to do?”

“Any number of things, really. Our coven isn’t exactly overflowing in population at the moment, remember? And Scratch is a powerful warlock.” He picks up a saw. “Now, I’m about to open this man’s head. Are we done here?”

Sabrina makes a face and exits to the sound of Ambrose turning on the saw. She tries to listen in at Zelda’s door, but Zelda’s put all sorts of charms and such in place to protect her study from any threat imaginable now that she’s high priestess and so she’s out of luck.

She’s sitting on the porch steps thinking of nothing and everything when Nick emerges from the house some time later. Whatever he and Zelda discussed, they had certainly discussed it thoroughly.

“You’re in a bit of trouble in there,” he says by way of greeting. “Seems you’ve ruined the twins’ dinner, and they’re giving Hilda a run for her money.”

“Not the first time, won’t be the last,” she replies. It’s odd, making small talk with Nick. He moves down several steps before he stops and looks at her. A moment passes between them that neither of them can define, but they feel it all the same.

“Do you have a minute?” he asks. “There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

Her heart skips.

“Okay,” she agrees. She expects him to sit, but he doesn’t.

“Zelda offered me a job teaching at the Academy.”

Her eyes grow wide.

“That’s good news, I suppose?” she asks. “You always said you might like to teach someday.” They both remember the quiet moments spent together, lying on her bed or sharing a table for two at Dr. Cerberus where they would discuss their plans for the years ahead. Nick, ever the bookworm, had talked about teaching. She wanted to change the world.

“It is,” he agrees. “But I want to make sure you’re okay with it before I say yes.” She frowns, wondering why he would need her permission. “The Academy is - yours. I wouldn’t be teaching you - you’re far past the curriculum Zelda outlined for me - but I won’t accept if you would rather I not.”

“Of course you should accept it,” Sabrina tells him and she absolutely means it. “You would be a great teacher, Nick. I know you would.” She knows because he’s taught her more than he will ever know.

“Are you sure?” he asks. “It’s okay if not.”

“I’m sure,” she nods. “Please, Nick, if you want the job, accept it.”

“I will then,” he says, relief evident. “Thank you.”

He’s more grown up, she realizes. Some fundamental part of him has shifted from boy to man. He’s quietly confident now, standing before her. He’s always been sure of himself, but his arrogance is nowhere to be found. He’s still Nick - she saw that while he was playing with Jude - but he’s a new edition, one that seems to have found his place.

She thinks she likes it.

“I should get going,” he says. He tilts his head towards the door. “Good luck in there.”

She smiles just a little.

“Thank you.” She watches him descend the stairs. “Nick?” He turns at the bottom of the flight and looks at her expectantly.

“What are you going to be teaching?”

He smiles and for all of his grown up appeal, his smile is the one of the boy she fell in love with.

“Demonology.”

* * *

It’s jarring at first, having Nick around.

She sees him in the hallways and occasionally at the mortuary where he comes for meetings with Zelda. He spends a lot of time with Jude, playing at the mortuary and around the Academy. From a distance, she can see it even if Nick can’t. He’s a de facto father figure for the child who clings to his every word.

At most, they trade pleasantries. He’s careful to never be caught in the moments he can’t help but look wistfully after her. He’s not over her, and he hasn’t given up on them, but for now, he knows this is what she needs. What they both need.

He watches from afar as she turns eighteen, a big deal in the mortal world, and she comes into her own a little more each day. There’s a moment of weakness when he considers how he wanted to make her seventeenth birthday special and failed and now here she is, eighteen, and they aren’t together. But he stays his course, and trusts that things will turn out - however they turn out.

Her tendency to make rash decisions and dive head first into the thick of things without a plan transforms itself into a sort of confidence that lends itself well to her mission of bettering the relationship between mortals and witches. She no longer thinks she can change the world in a night, but sees that she can start where she is, by helping her witch friends know and accept mortals. Down the road, Nick knows, she’ll parlay that into something bigger, but it’s her life’s work and fortunately for her, she has a long life to live.

He knows its her footsteps that approach his office. He hasn’t forgotten a single thing about her. Still, he pretends to be surprised by her appearance in his doorway.

“Sabrina,” he greets.

“Nicholas,” she replies in the same neutral tone she always uses when they speak. He hates that tone. It’s not her. “Or is it Mr. Scratch?” He makes a face. He insists his students call him by his first name - Nicholas, to maintain at least some formality to it all - because Mr. Scratch just seems so - old. Still, there are a few that think the proper name is funny. She smiles at his reaction. “It’s weird, seeing you like this.”

“Like how?” he questions.

“Working,” she admits. “You’re grading papers.”

“It’s not so bad,” he shrugs. He actually loves it. It’s interesting, seeing what stuck with his students, what didn’t. He’s identified the standouts, the ones that need some help, the ones that just can’t seem to care. He’s certain teaching is his own life’s work and he’s indebted to Zelda Spellman for insisting he take the role when he initially refused. “I do have a few students that could stand to review where, exactly, the Unholy Land is, but there’s still hope among them.”

“History papers, then.”

“History,” he confirms. He’s taken on teaching a few history classes in addition to demonology. Zelda needed someone and he doesn’t need to crack a book to teach the class, he’s so well-read, but of course, he does anyway. Books are how he passes most of his nights away now. “Demonology papers are next though.”

Sabrina wonders if he knows how well-respected he is among the students, even the ones who knew him as an older classmate. She’s not sure that he ever officially matriculated out of the Academy, but he’s always been smarter than most, and he’s certainly got the experience to tell a room full of young witches and warlocks about demons.

“Sounds like an exciting afternoon,” she says. He smiles a bit.

“Do you need something?” he asks, because he’s not sure why she’s there. She looks a bit like she’s been caught with her hand in the cookie jar, as her mortal counterparts might say.

“No,” she shakes her head. “I was just passing by on my way to the library for a book on,” she searches for a topic, “the Erinyes.” Of all the subjects she could have chosen to lie about, she chooses demons. Of course. “For research,” she adds almost stupidly. Nick makes her nervous now. He’s still so handsome, but he’s so much more poised, confident. It’s like she knows him like the back of her hand and yet doesn’t know him at all. It’s an odd place to be.

“The furies,” Nick says, standing. He goes to his bookshelf and plucks a volume from it. “Sowers of discord. They hear the complaints of mortals and then punish them accordingly, usually by hounding the perpetrators relentlessly.” He hands her the book, but doesn’t let go right away. “This should help. With your research.”

“Thank you,” she says. “I’ll bring it back when I’m done.”

She excuses herself with a bumbled excuse of still needing to go to the library. Nick settles back to his grading, pleased with the interaction.

It’s taken longer than he’d like but he thinks, maybe, the tides are finally turning.

* * *

She becomes a more frequent visitor to his office. Her excuses get better, and he’s even sure she’s telling the truth when she asks for his recommendation on a book to help her further understand a passage of one of her father’s journals. He hears her footsteps again and doesn’t bother to pretend to be surprised when she waltzes in.

“I probably know more about the Crusades than you do now,” she informs him, placing the latest book he’s loaned her on his desk.

“Is that so?” he asks.

“No, but I’d like to think I could hold own.”

“Sabrina, you have always held your own,” he reminds her. “It’s one of the things I…” he nearly says ‘love,’ “appreciate the most about you.”

She hasn’t missed that his guard has come down some in recent weeks. He’s a bit less formal, a bit more reminiscent of the charismatic warlock she met in choir class, the one that comes out when he’s playing with Jude and Leticia or having a drink with Ambrose at Dorian’s. Not that she goes there hoping to run into him. She certainly doesn’t sneak glances at him when she does find him there. Nor does she join him and Ambrose sometimes, under the guise that it would be rude of them to allow a lady to drink alone at the bar. She knows for a fact Ambrose humors her for his own amusement. She doesn’t like him sometimes.

“What’s the next topic of interest?” he questions. “Or are you open to suggestions?”

“I need to know more about the Unholy Land,” she pretends to decide. She’s had this play mapped out for a week. She’s not sure if he’s on to her, but she works to keep her lies believable, plans ahead instead of dropping by on a whim like she did the first time. “Not just what I’ve learned about in classes, witch or mortal. I need to know - more.”

Nick considers her. If it’s more she wants, it’s more she’ll get.

“I have a book for you,” he says.

“Of course you do,” she quips.

“It’s in my quarters, though. I’ll bring it by the mortuary?”

“That would be fine.” She nods her agreement. Her eyes land on a child’s drawing pinned to a cabinet behind him, a series of colorful crayon scribbles that don’t make a lot of sense to her. “Jude?” she asks, pointing at it.

“It’s supposed to be me and him,” Nick explains. “Don’t ask me to point us out, though. I suppose it’s supposed to be abstract. I promised him I’d hang it up.”

Sabrina smiles softly.

“He really loves you, you know.”

 _And I really love you,_ he thinks to himself.

“He’s a good kid,” Nick says. “I relate to him.”

He leaves it there.

She leaves his office, looking forward to his visit.

* * *

She’s not really curious about the Unholy Land, but he went through the trouble of bringing her the book, so she figures she may as well read it. It probably is useful knowledge, given her desire to know more about her father - Edward, not Lucifer - and his work and further it in her next several hundred years. She’s accepted its a marathon, not a sprint, and she doesn’t mind that anymore.

Good things come to those who wait, as they say.

She opens the book, but finds it’s not what she expected. It’s not an academic sounding textbook like the cover implies, like the other books Nick has lent her. It’s a journal, penned by hand, dated, she realizes, March of the previous year.

The day Nick left.

_I’ve never told anyone how easy it was for me to decide to go to Hell. Sabrina will never know how easy that choice was. Her life or mine is never a choice. It’s hers, always. I would make that choice again and again, even knowing what I know now - the torture, the pain, the desire to die and knowing I can’t. Even when I tried._

Sabrina shutters. They had never talked about what happened to him while in Hell. He had never offered. She had never asked.

_It was infinitely harder to walk away from her this morning._

_I wanted to stay. I wanted to fight - fight for her, for me, for us. But she’s been through so much - I guess I have, too - and she needs time to find herself. I need time to find myself, too, to heal, not just from the last months, but from - all of it._

_I don’t know who I am. Nicholas Scratch. Son of Matilda and Barrett Scratch. Born in Florence. Orphaned a few years later. Raised by a familiar. Taken in by the Church of Night. One part failure, one part brilliant. Fell in love with a half witch, half mortal. Betrayed her. Went to Hell. Lost her._

_That sums it up, I suppose._

Her eyes burn at his bitterness. She has never known him to be bitter, aside from the night at Dorian’s after they were expelled. She was willing to be there was bourbon involved as he penned this passage.

_I know what I want. I have a vision of who I could be. I’m damaged, though. I was damaged long before I said yes to the Dark Lord’s devotion. I’ve only ever known the love of a wolf. I didn’t know what love was, let alone how to love, until Sabrina._

_My heart hurts - actually hurts - as I sit here and think of her. I wish she could see herself as I see her. She knows she’s powerful. Independent. Capable of anything she puts her mind to. But I don’t think she knows how kind she is. How hard she loves. How absolutely intoxicating it is to be around her. She smells like lemons and vanilla and sunshine - clean, sweet, and happy. That’s her. A heart that isn’t evil, a disposition that, while fierce, is pure love. And she makes me happy. Warm. With her, I felt like I could be someone._

_I had to be someone._

_Only someone worthy of her will be allowed to stand next to her._

Tears roll down her cheeks as she reads Nick’s description of her. She can feel the love he had for her as he wrote it. She wants to close the journal, go to him and ask him what he means by giving it to her. But she can’t stop reading and she doesn’t think he would want her to.

_She wonders what of our relationship was real and what was for the Dark Lord. I’ll never, as long as I live, convince her it was all real. There were times, stretches of days, even, that I’d forget about his ask. My devotion was never truly to him. It was to her. Always her. Every touch. Every word. Every kiss. It was all real. I know it in my heart, even if she’ll never know it in hers._

_I’d say I lost myself, somewhere between falling for a girl in a choir room and binding myself to Satan, but I don’t know that I was ever really found. And so, here I am, in a self-imposed exile on a mission to figure out who I am, why I am the way I am._

_And perhaps I’m a fool for it, but I can’t help but hope that what I uncover will lead me back to Sabrina. Or her, back to me._

“Oh, Nick,” she breathes. She turns the page.

_I’m at my parents’ estate in Tuscany, just a bit from San Gimignano. Or my estate, I suppose. I haven’t been here since Blackwood scooped me up when I was ten, but it’s still managed in my name. Giorgio is still the groundskeeper and he’s done an excellent job. He was equal parts surprised and happy to see me. I was surprised by how happy I was to see him. It was good to find a familiar face after a week of solitude. I’ve always wondered if he knew my parents were witches, but if he does, he doesn’t let on, or maybe he doesn’t care._

_It’s more beautiful here than my memories recall. Rolling hills. Expansive gardens. Giorgio asked about the ‘dog’ I had as a child, and I told him Amalia had passed on. He remembered her as being protective, but left it at that. Surely he knows something was amiss, given I’ve never seen a dog her size and I doubt he has either. He insisted on uncovering all the furniture - his wife Maria came to help and she cooked us dinner after - but I don’t know how long I’ll be here. A while maybe. Or maybe not long at all._

_It feels like home. That’s odd to say, given that I haven’t been here in ten years. But it does. It’s comforting to be among my parents’ things. I’ve been going through their belongings, learning about them piece by piece. I visited their tomb today, and it hit me how much I miss them._

_My memories of my mom are the strongest. She was a good mom. She loved me. Coddled me a bit too much, perhaps, but she made sure I was well-cared for. She would cook big meals, and tell me stories about the Romans and the Greeks. My dad was a skilled conjurer and binder, too. He traveled a lot, left my mom and I here. But when he came back, it was always a big deal. He would hug us both, tell us how he had missed us. I think he really did love my mom. And my mom loved him. Maybe witches can devote themselves to one person after all._

_I’ve thought of Sabrina almost constantly since being here. I had allowed myself to think that maybe, one day, I would bring her here, show her where I grew up._

She shudders as she reads his words, and thinks of how she would have loved that - how she would like that.

_Sometimes, late at night in my dormitory at the Academy, I would think of this place and what it could be like to be here with her. I felt foolish for dreaming of a day far in the future when we might have our own family here, but now… Now that dream is even more unlikely and yet it’s all I can think of._

She continues to read, page after page, line after line. He details his days, the things he learns about his parents, the things being in his childhood home causes him to remember, like his mom’s quirks in the kitchen, his dad’s job within their coven, similar to that of a high priest.

 _I went to my parents’ school today,_ he writes halfway into the journal. _It’s in Florence, not unlike the Academy in some ways. I talked to some of their teachers. It seems they met there. My dad fell hard for my mom, but my mom was the most popular girl in their year and had eyes for another warlock. He won her over eventually, and they were inseparable. I suppose that’s true - they even died together._

She reads until well into the night, unable to put the journal down.

 _I nearly broke my own vow tonight,_ he writes on the last page. _I vowed to stay away from Sabrina. Give her space. Let her decide, today, tomorrow, 100 years from now, if she’ll trust me again. But my heart feels heavy. She’s on my mind - she’s always on my mind - in a way that is intense and real. I considered, for the wildest of moments, astrally projecting into her bedroom, see if she’s there, make sure she’s okay._

_I didn’t._

_I know when I do go back, I won’t leave again. I’d lose my soul if I projected, because not even 50 birds would be warning enough to tell me to leave if I see her._

_I tried a thousand times to ask Ambrose and Prudence about her tonight. A happy occurrence, running into them in the Unholy Lands. I’m here to revisit some of my parents’ favorite haunts. They’re here for Blackwood._

_I couldn’t ask them though. I couldn’t form the right words._

_But Prudence knows me. She pretended she left her purse and came back to the bar to find me having another bourbon - one of those nights._

_“She’s okay.”_

_That’s all she said, but it was just enough. Barely enough. But enough._

_Sabrina is okay._

_I’m starting to be._

She checks the date on the final entry. It’s a month before Ambrose and Prudence returned to Greendale. She knows there’s more. Nick surely started a new journal. She knows, too, why he gave it to her.

He wants her to ask for the next volume.

* * *

Her footsteps are timid as they toe down the hall to his office. He can’t pretend to be working. He’s too nervous. He watches the door, waiting. She appears after what feels like an eternity.

“I thought you said this book was about the Unholy Land,” she holds up his journal.

“It is. In a way.”

She understands. It’s his own pilgrimage. His own bid for peace and understanding.

“How did your parents die?” she asks. “You didn’t say and sadly, I never asked.”

He opens a desk drawer and pulls out another journal. This one isn’t disguised as a textbook. The one in her hand no longer is either, the charm having worn off.

“With your parents.”

Sabrina is struck silent.

“You mean… Our parents…”

“Your father - Edward - and mine became friendly during his visits to our coven in Italy, trying to rally support for his manifesto. My parents were supporters. They were with him on the plane that went down, along with a number of others. I believe, as you do, that Blackwood had the plane brought down. That’s one of many reasons why I was more than happy to help Prudence and Ambrose find and kill him.”

“Where did you go?” she asks. “After Blackwood was dead. Ambrose told me they asked you to come back with them, but you refused.”

His answer is to hold out the journal to her.

“It’s in here,” he tells her. “Everything is.”

* * *

She’s certain an eternity, not just a few hours, passes before she can hole away in her room with Nick’s journal. She knows what he’s doing. He’s letting her in. He’s giving her access to his deepest thoughts, most vulnerable moments. He’s allowing her to choose what happens next.

The first several entries are relatively mundane. They’re short, some just paragraphs, updating where he is, what he, Prudence, and Ambrose learned that day. There’s a longer entry that gives her pause. There was a confrontation with a band of witch hunters outside of the Unholy Land. It was Nick’s knowledge of demons and his ability to conjure them that got them out safely.

 _Tomorrow, we make our move,_ he penned the day before they attacked Blackwood. _I’ll go first. Clear the way for Ambrose and Prudence. Blackwood will believe I’ve sought him out to join the Church of Judas. My soul is tainted enough for it to be an easy sell, I hope. The orphan boy who lost his parents to a cause so different than what I’ll pretend to believe in. The fool who thought love was the answer, who sacrificed himself for a girl who couldn’t give a damn about him. He brought me into the Church of Night to use me for darkness. He groomed me to be dark, like him, to do his bidding. He’ll believe I’ve seen the light as the mortals say, and gladly let me into the fold. Once I’m in, I’ll summon Prudence and Ambrose. My job, then, is to get the twins._

_Either Blackwood will die, or I will. Those will be the only two outcomes._

_If I do die, I pray Sabrina somehow someday finds my journals and will know I died loving her. I suppose that’s my last wish._

Sabrina shivers as she realizes how dangerous the mission truly was. It’s worse now, knowing Nick put himself on the line, that he was, once again, prepared to die in order to save another. She warms again as she re-reads his line about loving her.

She keeps reading.

_Blackwood is dead._

_Ambrose delivered the first blow, but allowed Prudence the satisfaction of finishing him off. I got the twins to safety. They got Blackwood’s head._

That’s all he writes about that day.

The next entry.

_Ambrose and Prudence leave tomorrow. They’ve asked me to come with them, but I’m not ready. Soon. But not yet._

_I will miss them._

_I’ve always admired Prudence. She’s stronger than she gives herself credit for, and I think she knows that now. She can be a powerful and just witch, if she just gets out of her own way. Ambrose has proven to be a good ally. Perhaps even a friend. I think I’d like that - to have him - both of them - as friends. I’ve never really had true friends before._

_I may miss the twins most of all, particularly Jude. Prudence says he likes me so much because I was the first safe person to pick him up in so long - the first person who didn’t want to harm or manipulate him, but help him. I think he senses that I know what it’s like, to be a warlock with no father. Because he didn’t have one, not really. Blackwood was no father to those children._

_If I ever have the chance to be a father, I plan to be a good one. Like my father was to me, as short as my time with him was._

This is the moment, Sabrina realizes, where Nick found solid footing. He found friendship - true friendship, not the gaggle of warlocks that admired him, wanted to be him, and flocks of witches that wanted to be with him - in Prudence and Ambrose. He found a sort of bond with the twins, namely Jude, that gave him some sort of faith that he, too, could be a man like his father seemed to have been - good and right, upstanding and caring.

She can’t turn the page to find out what comes next fast enough.

_It took me three days, but I did it. It was a bold move. Maybe even stupid. For all of my anger at Sabrina for waltzing into Hell with just a hope that her plan to call down Heavenly Fire would work, I certainly spent the last few days operating on hope alone._

_It was worth it._

_I think, maybe, it might be time to go home._

She frowns.

“What did you do, Nicholas?” she wonders out loud.

The next entry is so boring she wants to throw the book. Salem meows as she huffs.

“Oh hush,” Sabrina scolds. “He’s all ‘I did something stupid even though I got mad at Sabrina for doing the same thing’ and what does he write about the next day? The fact that he had a great dinner and that it was nice to spend a day dry. I hope his feet got wet while it rained on him.” Salem meows again. “I know its petty,” she retorted. “But he can’t not say what stupid thing he did.”

She half stands, thinking she’ll stop there and go to his quarters and have him tell her the rest, but then she sits back down and resumes reading.

_Ask and you shall receive, as they say._

_I’ve been considering going home to Greendale for a bit now. I think I’m ready for whatever might wait for me there. I’m in a good place in the ways that truly matter. I know who I am now, what I want. Greendale feels like it is calling to me. The call sounds a lot like a certain blonde._

_Zelda Spellman wants to talk to me about teaching at the Academy. I refused at first, a knee jerk reaction, but Zelda is persistent and asked again nearly the moment she received my denial. Upon reconsideration, I think I’d like to hear her out - I’ve always wanted to teach. I never officially matriculated from the Academy_ \- there’s that answered, Sabrina thinks - _but I spent most of my time studying independently anyway. I found the classes boring, struggled to watch my classmates try to learn things I easily grasped years ago. It might be odd, given that some students won’t be much younger than me, a 22 year old Warlock. But I’m capable. I’m confident in that._

She likes that - that he’s confident in his abilities to stand at the front of the classroom. He should be. He was made for it.

_I was searching for a sign that it was right to go back to Greendale - maybe ignoring what I already knew in my gut out of fear, if I’m honest - and here it is. A summons from the high priestess herself._

_I leave in two days._

She turns the page, eager to read more.

_I saw her today._

_Dear Lilith, Sabrina Spellman is beautiful._

_I knew I’d see her. I could feel her approaching long before she ever emerged from the woods. I’ve never told her I could do that - feel her. It’s only her - something about her tells my body she’s nearby. It’s how my soul found its way back to my body after Hell. I could hear her, even when I couldn’t hear anyone else. Muffled at first, in the early days, but louder with each passing day, until I was healed enough to open my eyes._

_Seeing her for the first time after Hell… That’s one of my favorite moments. I was too weak to talk, to move even a finger, and she was everywhere, asking questions I couldn’t answer, checking for injuries that didn’t exist or else were long ago healed. Frustrated tears filled my eyes because all I wanted to do was tell her I loved her but the words wouldn’t come - not a single word would come. But she was there, and that was everything._

_I wonder if she knows the first word I said after I woke up was her name?_

_I digress._

_Jude and Leticia call her Sabby. I love that. It suits her. And she was sweet with them. That’s no surprise. She’s kind to everyone until they don’t deserve it._

_I think I disguised my feelings well enough. It was overwhelming, seeing her again, but at least I’d had time to prepare as she approached. Jude provided sufficient distraction, gave me a moment to light up at the sight of her, and then pull on a mask to cover up how affected I was. Zelda called me inside at just the right moment._

_The teaching job is meant for me. Demonology. I don’t know of a warlock or witch out there that knows more than me on that subject, given my past. Although Sabrina is probably not far behind me. I’ll teach a bit of history, too. I volunteered for that, as Zelda was laying out her plans for the Church of Lilith. It’s a chance to do something good with our powers, to live just and right. I’d be a fool not to embrace it. It’s everything my parents stood for - everything Edward Spellman stood for. Zelda knows her brother better than I thought._

_I did ask Sabrina’s permission first. I didn’t think it was fair, to accept without her blessing. I left Greendale so she could be okay again, heal, find herself. I didn’t want - I don’t want - to intrude on what she’s built here in my absence. But she was genuine in her agreement and so I’ve already sent word to Zelda that I’ve accepted._

_Zelda told me a bit about what Sabrina’s been up to. I didn’t ask - it’s no longer my place - but she said Sabrina spent some time mourning before she found her feet again after I left. I expected as much. She’s flourishing, though, realizing that she has the power to change the world, but that she can’t do it in a single night at a single party. I’m not surprised. I do think she could do it in a single night, if she set her mind to it, but slow and steady wins the race - I’m certainly hoping that approach helps me win mine._

_She did tell me Sabrina dated a moral for a few months. I nearly crushed the bourbon glass in my hand. I can’t be jealous. It’s a right I gave up when I left. But it hurt all the same, to think of her with someone else._

_Sabrina with someone else… I’ve already had to watch her with Harvey. Watching it happen again… There may actually be something harder than a ghost of a kiss, and a whispered ‘I love you’ before leaving her in Ambrose’s bedroom._

_Slow and steady._

Her eyes leak as she re-reads the entry and then re-reads it again. Something about this one warms her. It fills in blanks about their first meeting upon his return that she didn’t realize she had until now. It also starts to truly answer why he left.

The next several pages are trivial. They detail his trip back to Italy to collect his things, to bid Giorgio goodbye with the promise that he will be back soon. He writes about his nerves the night before his first day of teaching, pontificates about how much he loved it for three pages the next night. His day-to-day life is there, notes about students, thoughts he’s had while studying one subject or another, even plans for future lessons. It takes several pages for her to find her name again.

_Today is Sabrina’s 18th birthday._

_18 is a big deal to mortals. Dumb, really, that they consider themselves adults at that age. They know nothing about life, the world. Same goes for us witches and warlocks at sixteen, but I’m only 22 - I still don’t know much, in spite of what I’ve experienced, not when I’ve got hundreds upon hundreds of years ahead of me, Lilith willing._

_Today was hard._

_I long ago planned to make her 17th birthday special. She was still with the mortal when I made that decision, but her sixteenth birthday was a disaster and I thought she deserved better. I don’t know what I would have done - I didn’t make it that far in my planning process - I just know it would have been special._

_But I was newly back from hell and comatose in her cousin’s bedroom._

_Today, we simply aren’t together._

_I very nearly told her happy birthday at lunch. She was sitting there with Melvin and Elspeth, beaming as they presented her with a cupcake and sang “Happy Birthday” off key. I didn’t, though. I couldn’t. I needed to watch from afar this year, and hope, someday, that I’ll have my chance to give her a birthday worthy of her._

_I saw her again, later, celebrating with her mortal friends at Dr. Cerberus. I went for a walk, trying to shake the funk I’ve been in all day, and of course fate would ensure that I saw her sitting with them in the window, a cake, party hats, streamers, and balloons. She was wearing a ridiculous birthday tiara, and it was somehow perfect on her._

_Maybe next year will be better._

_I suppose I’ve said that before though, haven’t I?_

She reads this entry several times, too, looking for meaning, for understanding as to what Nick is implying. Does he still have feelings for her? Why couldn’t he simply say ‘happy birthday?’ Or even come into Dr. Cerberus? Her friends ask about him, would probably even like to see him. They helped rescue him from Hell, after all.

She has to keep reading.

He likes mortal Thanksgiving. That makes her smile. She had made a big deal out of the whole Academy - it’s not many, still - having a Thanksgiving meal, and that had included the staff, which included Nick. He’s never had some of their mortal foods, and is especially fond of the macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. She decides to remember that.

He spends Christmas and Winter Solstice in Italy. Giorgio and Maria have him over for dinner on Christmas Eve, and she finds herself grateful that he wasn’t alone. He writes about lighting the Yule Log, unearths mortal Christmas decorations in his parents’ attic that lead him to believe they may have embraced some of the mortal holidays, too. She has a mental image of him rummaging through a big villa, unearthing more and more about his past, who he is, who his parents were. She likes that, too.

_She came to my office today._

_I pretended to be surprised, but I still know her footsteps - I still feel her presence - and greeted her accordingly - professional, even, if I had to label it. I didn’t want to be too familiar._

_She’s still a terrible liar._

_At least to me._

_She wasn’t en route to the library, for one. The library is in a whole other wing. And then to lie about a book for research… She should have chosen anything other than demonology. I loaned her a book I know she’ll go home and read on principle, and I hope to Lilith I’m in my office when she brings it back._

He details their encounters, knows each fib she’s telling when she requests another book, knows she was telling the truth when researching something from her father’s journals. Another passage comes up that she reads several times.

_I’m starting to hope._

_That’s dangerous - to hope._

_Hopes get dashed, hearts get broken._

_But damned if I’m not starting to hope that maybe, maybe, Sabrina is coming back to me. I’ve been patient. I’ve healed my wounds, found something I’m passionate about - aside from her - to keep me busy. I’ve let go of the outcome, of the when, and dared to believe it will work out._

_Lilith help me, but I’m going to hope._

She realizes with a start that he’s been patiently waiting for her this entire time. He left Greendale with the intention of letting her find her way back to him in her own time. He’s used that time to find out who he is, take up a job teaching, carve out his own place in their world, his own name.

Solid ground is starting to slip away, but she turns the page. It’s the last entry.

_I gave her my first journal tonight._

_She said she needed to know more about the Unholy Land. She’s fibbing again, but I think it’s time to share about my own pilgrimage with her. It’s one of the riskier things I’ve done, disguising the journal as a textbook and dropping it at her house. But one cannot live life without risks, and if this gamble pays off, it will be worth it._

_All I can do now is wait._

_I suppose I’m good at waiting now._

She closes the journal and just sits, stunned.

Nick doesn’t love her.

His feelings for her go so far past love that she isn’t sure there’s a name for it. The boy, who didn’t know what love was, has become a man consumed by it.

She thinks back again, but this time, she’s not asking herself if it were Nick or the Dark Lord. She’s trying and failing to count every single time Nick ever did something for her. Touched her. Helped her. It’s not the big moments she’s considering, either.

It’s how his eyes lit up when she came down the stairs ahead of the Baxter High Valentine’s Day dance and then again when he took in the obnoxiously decorated gymnasium. It’s how he chuckled a bit nervously and commented on how cozy the library was between kisses before Amalia attacked. How he yelled “I love her!” to Amalia, his voice full of fear as he begged her not to hurt Sabrina.

It’s how he always escorted her home. How he put his hand on her low back and casually switched sides with her when they walked down the sidewalk, putting himself between her and traffic. How he showed up with his notes from conjuring class two years earlier when he knew she was struggling. How he never failed to remember her favorite tea, her favorite breakfast food, even her favorite donut at Dr. Cerberus.

She still doesn’t know what his favorite breakfast food is.

It’s a million little things and they all add up to the same thing - Nicholas Scratch loves her, always had, and, she thought, always would.

When she remembers that first night, crying her heart out by his bedside while his hand rested limply in hers and she wished he would hold her because his arms were safe, she knows.

She loves him, too.

Always had.

Always would.

She has to go to him.

* * *

Her knock is light, hesitant.

He steels himself and prays to Lilith for a good outcome before he opens the door.

“You’ve been waiting for me.”

He allows her to see the longing look he works so hard to hide whenever she’s around.

“I’ve been hoping for you,” he counters. They gaze at one another. “Come in?”

It’s a question, not a request. He’s giving her the chance to decide. She holds his eyes as she enters his quarters. He closes the door and stands quietly, watching her take in the place he’s calling home for now.

It’s small, but not cramped. Dark because of the stone of the Academy, leather and red and black because Nick. There are shelves of books, a stack of books by a chair that she’s certain Nick had been sitting in before her arrival - there’s a stack of papers, some graded, some not, and a glass of bourbon on a side table next to it. It’s quiet and the fire in the grate is low. She wonders if he spends every night in silence like this.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks, his nerves clear.

“No,” she shakes her head. She takes a chance and perches on the leather couch. He’s hesitant in his movement, but he comes to sit in his chair. She tucks her hair behind her ear and says the first thing that comes to mind. “Nick, I forgave you a long time ago.”

“I was hoping the whole sacrificing myself for the world thing might earn me a few points,” he says. He means it as a joke, but it’s so true he can’t pull it off.

“That’s not when I forgave you,” she shook her head. “I forgave you in my bedroom, not when you asked for it, but when I watched how you worked on the acheron. You went somewhere else, to some other place in your mind. I think the world could have been ending around you, and you wouldn’t have known it. I saw your determination and I let go of my anger. I still didn’t trust you - not with my heart - but I did trust that you wanted the same goal.”

“I had to make that acheron work,” Nick told her. “In that moment, I correlated fixing that acheron with your trust and forgiveness. When it didn’t work…”

She saw the moment in her mind’s eye when Satan erupted from the configuration. It was a memory she still revisited often. But this time, the rest of it was blurred. All she saw was Nick’s crestfallen face, realizing he had failed.

Failed her.

“You really didn’t care about the world when you stepped forward, did you?” she asked.

“I didn’t give a damn about the world, anyone in that room, or even myself. All I cared about was you.” He fiddles with a signet ring on his left pinkie finger. She tries to get a better look at it. She’s never noticed it before, but he’s talking again before she can see more than the fact that its gold. “If it were to happen now, I would still make the decision to save you, but I would care a little more about the rest of the world, too.”

She believes that. She sees how Nick has matured. He had been a boy making a rash decision then. Now, he is a man who understands the world a bit more.

“I was so mad at you for leaving,” she told him. “You just - left.”

“I made the right decision.” Nick left no room for doubt. “I had been thinking about it for days. You were distant and our relationship was in ruins. You had been through so much and so had I. We needed to figure ourselves out before we could be together. I knew it would hurt you, but I also knew we would hurt ourselves more if we kept going as we were.”

“You were right,” she admitted. “It took me a while to see it, but you made the right decision.” She wants to reach for him, touch him. She can’t remember the last time she touched him and it’s suddenly the most important thing in the world to her, to touch him. She sits on her hands. Not yet. “Why the journals?”

“I took a page out of your father’s book, so to speak,” he explains. “I needed to work through my mess of thoughts, but I also wanted to document - everything.” He spins his ring again. “I intended for you to read them at some point. I wanted you to know I’ve only thought of you.”

“You were upset on my birthday.”

“In spite of being in a better place, I fell victim to a bout of self-pity that day. I’m 0-3 in the birthday department with you. We didn’t know one another when you turned sixteen, but I watched from afar and saw how big of a disaster it was. You turned seventeen while I lay weak and unconscious in your attic, and we weren’t together when you turned eighteen.”

“My next one is six months from now,” she tells him with a ghost of a smile. “You’ve got some time to figure out how to make this one special.”

“I only need you to allow me,” he promised.

“Is that why you didn’t tell me happy birthday?” Nick shakes his head.

“Self-perseverance,” he explains. “I couldn’t pursue you, and that meant I couldn’t talk to you, not without you initiating the conversation.”

“I don’t understand,” Sabrina says.

“When I left Greendale, I did so with the belief that what we have, our connection, is strong enough to bring us back together, in due time. It was a complete act of faith, but I held onto it. I also knew you had to be the one to make the first steps towards us. I betrayed your trust. I hurt you. I have to let you decide if you want this or not. I’m a weak man…”

“You are not, and never have been, weak,” Sabrina interrupts him with a shake of her head. “You are the strongest person I know, Nick.”

“That’s one of the more ridiculous things I’ve heard you say,” he counters. “The Dark Lord knew I was weak…”

“The Dark Lord preyed on your vulnerabilities,” Sabrina corrected, able to see it all clearly now with time. “You said it in your journals, Nick. He knew you wanted love - he used that against you. It’s not a weakness, to want to love or be loved. It’s a vulnerability that makes us human.”

“Even now, I feel like I failed you,” he confesses. “Over and over again at that.”

“You didn’t fail me, Nick.” She wishes he could see things from her point of view. “You saved the world and then you went off and saved yourself when you needed to the most. I daresay that your leap of faith in believing we would find our way back to one another may be your bravest move of all.”

His heart picks up its rhythm. Maybe… Just maybe… Lilith is going to answer his prayer.

He’s certainly been praying it long enough.

He slips from the chair and kneels before her. The last time he was like this, she spit in his face. He’s hopeful for a different outcome. He’s had a speech all worked out for sometime, should this moment come, but he’s forgotten all of it. All he can do is speak from his heart.

“I’m sorry, Sabrina.” It’s the most sincere apology she’s ever heard. “I may have followed the Dark Lord’s wishes, but they weren’t hard to follow. I only ever wanted to be close to you and maybe, if I were lucky, you’d fall in love with me.” He smiles just a little. “I meant it when I said I fell hard after you sang in choir. You walked into that room and just - sang. You were fearless and all I could think was ‘I need to know her.’

“I would forget that I had a devotion because it was so easy to fall in love with you. I wish I could tell you how horrible it was, standing behind that curtain and waiting to confess. I knew you were going to be devastated and the thought that I was the one doing it…”

“It hurt, Nick,” Sabrina says softly.

“I know it did,” he takes her hands. “I’ll regret hurting you forever. I had been crying before I came to your room that night. I was devastated, Sabrina, but I was also scared. I’d hurt you, lost you, but the Dark Lord wanted you and I knew that was the last thing you wanted - I couldn’t let him take you. I could exist in a world where you hated me, because there was always a chance that I could change your mind, but I couldn’t exist in a world without you.”

“It was your bloodshot eyes - and your knowledge of that damned acreon - that made me decide to let you stay and help,” she admits. She looks down at their joined hands. Lilith, it feels good to touch him again - to feel his hands warm again. “I thought, maybe after we saved the world, we could talk. We didn’t get that chance.”

“We have the chance now,” Nick points out. He moves to sit next to her on the couch. He sits close, keeps one of her hands in his, decides to risk everything. “I want us, Sabrina. I want you. A life together. But there’s been a lot of hurt between us, a lot of damage done. I won’t push you for something that you don’t want, but I want you to know where I stand.”

Sabrina studies him for so long he starts to will a hole to open up and swallow him whole, sure she’s going to turn him away. He wishes she’d just get it over with. Rip off the bandaid.

“What’s your favorite breakfast food?”

He frowns.

That’s not what he was expecting.

“What?”

“Your favorite breakfast food,” Sabrina repeats. “You know mine…”

“Blueberry pancakes,” he supplies easily. “With a little too much syrup for most people’s tastes, a bit of butter, bacon on the side.”

She smiles a bit, because of course he remembers.

“What’s yours?” she asks again.

“French toast,” Nick tells her. “With fruit.” Sabrina nods, committing the fact to memory. “Why?”

“I didn’t know,” she confesses. “After everything, while I was waiting for you to wake up, I realized I didn’t know much about you, all things considered. I didn’t know how old you were when your parents died, what happened to them, not even what your favorite breakfast food was. I wasn’t a good girlfriend, all things considered.”

“There was a lot going on,” Nick reminds her. “And I wasn’t exactly in a place where I was willing to be vulnerable when we first met.”

“You were four when your parents died?” she clarifies.

“I was,” Nick confirmed. “Blackwood swooped in and brought me to the Church of Night when I was twelve.” His thumb brushed back and forth over the back of Sabrina’s hand. “I know now that he had been looking for me for a long time, intending for me to be a part of his grand plan. Did you know Prudence’s mother was on the plane, too?”

Sabrina’s eyes grow big.

“No…”

“It’s true,” Nick confirms. “The story about her drowning in the river is a lie. Dorcas and Agatha’s parents were on the plane too.”

“That’s why there were so many orphans at the Academy,” Sabrina realizes. “He killed our parents and collected us like trophies.” She shakes her head. “I’m glad he’s dead. I’d kill him myself if he weren’t.”

“He can’t hurt us anymore,” Nick agrees.

Sabrina moves then and he’s sure she’s preparing to make her exit. Instead, she moves closer to him and tentatively rests her head on his shoulder.

“Can we start over?” she asks. “All of this that we’ve been through, the hurtful things we said and did… Can we just put them behind us and try again?”

Nick is sure his heart is going to explode from his chest.

“I want nothing more than to try again.” He releases her hand, but only to put an arm around her and draw her close. It’s such an incredible feeling to have her tucked against him again that he nearly forgets he had a point to make. “I don’t know that we can just forget what we’ve been through, though. We can move past it, but I don’t want to forget it. I learned too much from my mistakes to want to forget them.”

“Forgive but not forget,” Sabrina says. “I can do that.” She looks up at him. “I want to do that, Nick. I want to be with you again. I need us to take it slow, though. I can’t just jump right back in…”

“It’s a good thing we have lifetimes ahead of us then. We can take things as slow as you need them to go. I’ve waited a long time to have you in my arms again. Waiting doesn’t bother me.”

She snuggles into him, content to let him hold her, content in what they are right now, content to let go of the past and see what lies ahead for them. He pulls her closer and leans back into the leather couch. He’ll never move again, if that’s what she wants. Sabrina closes her eyes and breathes him in. He smells like leather and sandalwood. She runs her hand down his chest just once, feeling the muscles that have returned, the mass his bones carry once more. She’s so thankful in that moment that she lets a tear fall. Nick doesn’t mention it, but she knows by the way he brings her still closer that he knows.

It’s quiet in his quarters, peaceful, even. She could stay here, just like this, for as long as he allows it, which she thinks would be a long time. But the space is chilly, has been since she got there, but the fire is now no more than glowing embers. She tries to tuck herself close to Nick to absorb some of his body heat.

“You’re cold,” he realizes. “I’m sorry. Let me get the fire burning again.” He mutters some Latin and flames roar to life in the grate. Their warmth makes its way to her moments later. “Better?”

“Much,” she confirms, but she stays where she is, curled against him. He’s not going to complain.

“I don’t like the heat,” he confesses after a bit more silence. “It took me a while to remember what happened to me in Hell, but when I did… I developed a bit of an aversion to heat. That’s why I tend to keep it cooler in my classroom, and cooler still in my quarters.”

Sabrina looks up at him, considering. Then she’s the one muttering Latin. The flames die down as though she’s turned them down by hand.

“No, you’re cold…” he starts to protest. She’s still muttering. A blanket appears in their laps. She spreads it over her, then offers it to him, giving me the choice to warm up with her. He chooses her. “This is a satisfactory compromise,” he decides, making her giggle just a little. She settles back against him. He takes a moment to thank Lilith.

“Nick?” she asks after a bit. “Will you tell me about Hell? What you went through?”

He’s quiet for a long time. She expects him to tell her no.

“I was tortured,” he finally says. “Every day, every moment of every hour. Sometimes it was physical, but it was always emotional…”

“Lilith promised me she’d take care of you,” Sabrina interrupts, the familiar tone of indignation in her voice. “She promised…”

“She did what she could,” Nick soothed. “She made it as bearable as it could be. But I had Satan inside of me. His anger only fueled his powers. He kept up a pretty unbroken diatribe about how I wasn’t meant for love, how unloveable I was…”

“That’s not true…”

“I know that now,” he assures her. “I do, Sabrina. I knew it then, even, thanks to you. But when you hear something day in and day out… You start to believe it. When I would fight back, that’s when he would torture me, take over, make me do things to harm myself. I had to find the strength to fight back, to take my body over again. It got harder and harder to do the longer I was there.”

“Nick… I’m so sorry…”

“I wanted to kill myself,” he admits. He tightens his arm around her, anticipating the way she would tense in reaction to his admission. “I tried, a few times.” The tears are flowing down her cheeks now. He catches one with his thumb. “Satan wouldn’t let me. It was more fun for him if I were alive, and with him inside of me, I don’t know that I could have succeed anyway.”

“I can now remember being aware of you being there to get me. It’s hazy, at best, but I remember your voice. You said ‘Nick, I’m here. Let’s go home.’” Sabrina nods. That’s exactly what she had said. “I can remember now, too, what felt like my soul heaving a sigh of relief the moment we made it through the gates and then just - leaving. My body was so broken and tired and so was my soul. They had to seperate to heal.”

“Like us,” Sabrina says quietly.

“Like us,” Nick agrees. “I could hear your voice before I heard anyone else’s. It was a mumble at best, at first, but as I got stronger, it got clearer, closer. The first thing I remember hearing you say clearly was ‘Billy Marlin is an idiot.’”

Sabrina smiles slightly.

“I was talking to Theo,” she remembers. “He was debating on whether to go to a party Billy invited him to, but at the time, Billy was a bit wishy washy on where he stood with Theo and I wasn’t his biggest fan.”

“One of the worst parts was being able to hear you, but not being able to respond. You would sit by my side and talk to me, and I couldn’t say anything back. I liked the days when you would tell me about your day or read to me. But then some days, I could hear how tired and weary you were and I just wanted to comfort you. There was a day when you talked to me about how hard everything was, how you constantly questioned what was real, wrestled with how to love me but not trust me.”

“You could hear all of that?” she asks.

“Every word,” he promises. “You asked me to come back so we could figure this out. I kept thinking ‘I’m trying.’” His hand starts to rub circles on her back, as much for his comfort as for hers. “The first time I woke up, no one was there. It was the middle of the night. It was snowing. I had hardly any strength, but I managed to turn my head to look for you. I went back to sleep. I don’t know how long it was until I woke up again. I think it may have been the same day, but I have no way of knowing.”

“I nearly collapsed with relief when Hilda came to the Academy to tell me you were awake. Then I made you cry.”

“You didn’t make me cry,” Nick shakes his head. “Those were tears of frustration. I had no control over my body. I had a thousand things I wanted to say, and words wouldn’t form. I wanted to wrap you in my arms and just feel your heart beating against mine, but I couldn’t even take your hand. I was demanding my body do something - anything - and it just wouldn’t.”

“You could speak later that night,” she recalls. “Not a lot - you said my name, told me to sleep.”

“You were worried I wouldn’t wake up again.”

“I was terrified.”

He kisses her hair. He’s been trying not to since the moment she wrapped herself in his arms. But he can’t hold back any longer.

“We’re okay now,” he says. “Both of us.”

“You can’t leave again,” she tells him and hears the hint of fear in her voice. “No matter how right you were, you can’t leave like that again.”

“I won’t,” he promises. He knows he won’t have to. He can’t explain how he knows, but he just does. Sabrina is his and he is hers. “Are you warm enough?”

“I am.” She finds his hand under the blanket and brings it where she can study his ring. It’s gold and simple, monogrammed with a large ‘S’ flanked by a smaller ‘N’ and ‘B.’ He watches her, curious, knows she’s going to ask about it. He’s eager to tell her. “Where did this come from?” she finally asks.

“It was my father’s.”

She runs her fingers over it.

“The ‘S’ is for ‘Scratch,’” she says. “The ‘B’ - Barrett?”

“Barrett,” he confirms.

“What’s the ‘N’ for?”

“Nicholas.”

She looks at him, understanding. “‘Nicholas Barrett Scratch.’ That was your father’s full name.”

“And mine,” Nick tells her. “He went by Barrett, however. Believe it or not, I didn’t know my middle name until I found some papers while digging through his office.”

“‘Nicholas Barrett Scratch,’” she repeats. “I like it. It’s a strong name. Appropriate.” He kisses her hair again. “In your journals you said you did something stupid in spite of getting upset with me for, I believe you wrote, ‘waltzing into Hell’ hoping my plan would work. What was it?”

“First, I want you to know I was never ever mad or ungrateful that you rescued me from Hell,” he clarifies. “I was upset that you risked your life for mine. Had it not worked out, we both would have sacrificed for nothing.”

“I understand that now.”

She does. Because again, time and space has allowed her to see things as they were, instead of how she thought they were while swept along in the moment.

“As for the dumb thing I did… Remember when we used your bathtub to get your father’s manifesto?”

“Yes…”

“I did it again. Three days straight”

“Nick… she sighs.

“When I was looking for the manifesto, I saw all sorts of luggage and belongings. I thought, maybe, there may be something there - an heirloom or more papers. Most of it was clothing, things like that, but I did find my father’s signet ring. I had it cleaned and now I wear it always.”

He had found something else, too. He would give it to her before they parted ways tonight.

“And there was no one waiting for you to come back? To intervene if necessary?”

“It was foolish,” he agrees. “Although not as foolish as waltzing into Hell hoping you were right, so let’s call it a draw and let bygones be bygones.”

“Fine,” she agrees, appropriately admonished. She lets it drop. They return to a comfortable silence for a long time, simply happy to be together again.

“It’s late,” she says after a while. “I should go home.”

“I’ll escort you.” He wants her to stay, but that’s not how slow works. “Teleport or walk?”

“Walk,” she decides easily. “It’ll take longer.” She’s not quite ready to part ways but she still stands, knowing she and Nick have all the time in the world.

“I’m going to get a jacket,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

She notices the photo of a man on a nearby bookshelf then. She wanders over to it and gasps. She’s seen him before. In Hell. She picks it up, just as Nick returns, settling his black jacket over his shoulders.

“Who is this?” she asks, turning to show him the photo.

“My dad,” Nick answers. “There’s one of my mom on the shelf beside it, and one of them together in my bedroom.”

She pivots and finds the photo of his mother. She’s seen her, too.

“I saw them, Nick,” she says, turning back to him. “In Hell, in the Sixth Circle. My dad - Edward - was there, urging me on, telling me I could reach you. There were other people there, behind him, pushing me on. Your parents were there. They wanted me to get to you, too.”

She sees by his stunned expression, knows he had never considered how close he had been to his parents.

“The other people,” he says after a moment. “Is this them?”

He picks up another photo, this one on the table by his chair, and brings it to her. Her parents are in it. So are Nick’s. There’s a woman that looks so much like Prudence that it has to be her mother. She can guess which ones are the parents of Dorcas and Agatha, too.

“That’s them. Except for my mom, they were all there. Part of her punishment is to be separated from my dad, even in the afterlife. I can’t believe I didn’t realize…”

“I found it in my parents’ things,” Nick tells her. “I think it was the core group of supporters for your father’s manifesto.”

Tears well up in her eyes as she studies the photo.

“Wow,” she breathes. It’s all she can say. Their paths had always been meant to cross. She believes that in her soul.

“You can take it if you want,” Nick offers. She shakes her head.

“Let’s leave it here,” she says. She puts it back in its place. “It feels like it should be here.”

He holds her hand as they idle through the woods to the mortuary. He walks her all the way to the front door, just as he had many times before.

“I do have something for you.” He’s suddenly nervous. “From my foolish trips to the bottom of the ocean.” He produces a small wooden box from the inside of his jacket and hands it to her. It’s worn by the pressure of the sea, but she can just make out her mother’s initials engraved on the lid. “Maybe this can make up for the two birthdays I missed, and the one that didn’t go according to plan.”

She glances at him, then opens the box. Inside sits a pair of dainty pearl earrings. Again, tears well up in her eyes.

“Nick…” She can hardly believe it. She’s holding a pair of her mother’s earrings.

“I had them cleaned as well,” he tells her. “I found them in what I assume was her luggage. I’ve been selfishly holding onto them, waiting for a moment like this.”

She throws her arms around his neck and it’s worth every minute of the time he spent holding his breath thousands of feet below the sea.

“Thank you,” she stammers. “Nick, thank you.”

“Thank you,” he whispers. “For letting me have one more chance.”

He hadn’t intended to kiss her tonight in the name of going slow, but there is simply no avoiding it. It’s the best feeling in the world, their lips together again, her in his arms. He pulls away before he can inadvertently push her too far.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asks.

“And every day after that,” he promises. He kisses her forehead. “Goodnight, Spellman.”

When she steps inside, Ambrose is sitting on the stairs looking smug.

“About time.”

“Shut up,” she counters.

“I’m a bit wealthier thanks to you,” he continues. “I had April in the pool.”

“What pool?” she asks. It hits her. “Ambrose! Did you gamble on my love life?”

“We all did,” he shrugs at her scandalized tone. “We all knew you and Nick would get back together once he was back in Greendale. Poor Aunt Hilda thought it would take a week. It’s like she doesn’t know you’re the most stubborn individual to ever be called a witch, and Scratch certainly wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize his status with you.”

“I’m going to bed,” she declares. “In the morning, I’m going to look into our family tree, see if I can’t find a better cousin than you.”

His laughter follows her up the stairs.

In her bedroom, she tries on her mother’s pearls. They’re perfect.

She makes the decision to never take them off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I REALLY want Part 4 to explore Nick's past. There has to be so much there. There's a reason he thinks he's fundamentally broken. This Nick thought that too and did something about it. Crossing fingers for better in Part 4... 
> 
> I loved the journal entries. Nick LOVES Sabrina. And I think show Nick does too - all the sacrificing of himself. But seriously, can we get a Nicholas Scratch comeback like this, when he's all healthy and worked through his traumas and confident and ready to get his girl back? 
> 
> Let me know what you think before Chapter 3 - the final part, which happens to be... Happy.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are - the final part of this "slow as molasses in the office so I have to do something" fic that I ended up sharing because it felt like it should be shared after Part 3. Enjoy. 
> 
> (P.S. - it's a bit rated R. But I figure if we can have sex demons on Netflix, y'all can have a sex scene or two here too).

> _My wings are frayed and what's left of my halo's black_   
>  _Lucky for me, your kind of heaven's been to Hell and back_

Their relationship builds and their bond deepens. Nick takes her to her senior prom, an odd contrast given that he’s also a full blown teacher in her other world. He’s at her mortal graduation, her witch graduation. She spends increasing amounts of time in his quarters, just being with him.

She spends the night with him for the first time on accident. She falls asleep on his couch while reading a gothic romance novel. He’s grading final exams and doesn’t have the heart to wake her, but he can’t let her sleep on the couch, either. He carries her to his bedroom with intentions of sleeping on the sofa himself, but she reaches for him and that’s that. Soon, she’s spending less nights at the mortuary, more nights with him.

He takes her to Italy when summer arrives.

“I can’t believe you grew up here,” she says as she stands on the veranda and takes in the rolling hills of Tuscany before them. “This is perfect, Nick.”

“I spent four really good years here,” he amends, coming to stand behind her. “Amalia kept me alive for the next eight.” He drops a kiss to her shoulder. “Maybe one day…” He trails off. Sabrina turns to him. He’s a little too cautious sometimes, holding onto a residual fear that he could lose her. He still struggles, just a little, to accept that she loves him, warts and all.

“Maybe one day what?” she prompts, because she wants to have this conversation. She’s already read about it in his journals. She wants to hear him say it. He looks a little embarrassed.

“Maybe one day - in the future - we could live here.”

“I’d like that,” Sabrina tells him, smiling in a way that makes him sure she’s telling the truth. “I think this could be a good place to have our own family.” She sees the hope flair in him. It’s far, far down the road, they both know that, but for now, the promise is enough. “I want what you want, Nick,” she admits. She’s never said it out loud before, and she feels vulnerable, but Nick is her safe place, her partner. “To be the mom I didn’t get to have.”

He knows the page of his journal she’s referring to.

His kisses her, because it’s the only response he has.

It intensifies.

She’s pressed against the stonework railing, his body flush with hers. She still can’t seem to get close enough though, no matter that there’s no space left between them.

At least not in their current state.

“Nick,” she sighs as his lips work along her neck. “Make love to me.” He pulls away and looks her in the eyes. She puts a hand on his cheek and brushes her thumb across it. “Make love to me,” she requests again. “Please.”

He takes just a moment to make sure she means it before he sweeps her into his arms. He’s envisioned this moment, and he’s damned glad it didn’t happen during Lupercalia three years ago. She deserves better than that for her first time. He’s selfishly damned glad she’s still a virgin and that he has the honor of being the one with her.

It’s his first time, too, in some ways.

It’s his first time being with a half witch.

First time being with a virgin.

First time being with someone he loves.

Lilith, he loves her.

He’s surprised by how submissive she is in bed. Not in a bad way. She doesn’t battle him for control like he expected she would, like she may have in another time. She simply gives herself to him, and he guides her through, taking the time to make sure she’s okay, that he’s hurting her the least amount possible, because knows it’s going to hurt. He knows her first time won’t be her best time, but he hopes it will still be special to her.

“Look at me,” he breathes, just before he pushes into her. He wants to see her. She opens her eyes from where they had rolled back in pleasure as his fingers danced over her. He’s gazing at her with so much love and patience that she has to kiss him. “This will hurt. If it’s too much, tell me. I’ll stop.”

She raises her hips in response.

He pushes in with one swift stroke, deciding it best to get the discomfort over with as quickly as possible. She cries out and he hears her pain and hates it. He stills, giving her time to adjust, recover. Several minutes pass before she tentatively moves her hips against his.

He’s careful and slow, watching her for any hint of discomfort. He kisses her deeply, works to hold himself back. He’s been celibate since the moment he kissed her in that ridiculous play and the friction feels like a long lost friend, but more, because it’s with her.

“Nick…,” she sighs, the initial pain slowly being replaced with pleasure. “This… Amazing…”

It wasn’t that it felt especially good. It didn’t hurt anymore, but it was her first time and she knew from her extensive reading on the subject and long talks with Roz that it wasn’t supposed to be mind blowing. It was that she was so close to Nick, connected to him in a way she had never been with someone.

“I love you,” he breathes into her ear. “I love you, Sabrina.”

He’s determined to make this good for her. He knows what he likes. He likes deep penetration. He likes to be a little rough, a little dominant. He likes to be ridden, to have lips wrapped around him. He likes to pump his hips with abandon and come hard. But Sabrina has no idea what she likes, and while he’s going to be the one she learns with, this time, their first time, her very first time, he’s going to make sure she falls apart.

It’s incredible. Overwhelming. His lips on her neck, nipping and sucking. His hands holding hers over their heads as he moves within her. And _him._ He’s certainly well-endowed, but it’s his width, the way he’s filling her, spreading her, that makes it feel better with each stroke.

She starts to tremble.

“Nick… Oh… Nick… Please…” She squeezes his hands harder. “Please… Don’t… Stop…”

“Never,” he promises. He nips her ear. “Fall apart, Sabrina.” His hot breath on her ear makes her eyes roll back. “Go on. Let go. Let me see you.”

It’s the most incredible thing she’s ever felt. Wave after wave of pleasure, her body convulsing in a way that was somehow both primal and intimate. She was already Nick’s, but now, he owns every part of her.

His own orgasm has been building and he can’t hold it off much longer. When she goes stiff in his arms and cries out his name at the peak of her orgasm, he allows himself a little of what he likes, pumping into her with purpose. He’s deep within her and while he might appear to be the one in control, she’s the one that has him wrapped around her every want and need.

“Nick,” she breathed. “Please. You… Let yourself…” She can’t form a full sentence, but he knows what she’s prompting. “I’m yours. All yours.”

And then he’s spilling into her and it’s not just liquid he’s leaving, but his heart and soul.

“Unholy shit,” he breathes when he’s able to find words again. “Sabrina… Dear Lilith…”

“Nick,” she sighs, so sated and content she’s decided she’s never leaving the bed they’re in right now. “That… Wow…”

He kisses her shoulder.

“Are you okay?” he asks, sweet and concerned.

“I’m okay,” she assures him. “Better than.”

He pulls out of her and intends to lie beside her, but she stops him.

“Don’t,” she directs. “I want you close.” She bends her knees, making room for him, wraps her arms around him to hold him close. She knows they’ll need to change the sheets, but dear Lilith, she just wants to hold him. “I love you, Nick.”

“I love you,” he breathes back. “Lilith, I love you, Sabrina.”

They share a sweet kiss.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks, her well-being still her top priority.

“It hurt at first,” she confesses. “Longer than I expected it to. But then, it started to feel okay and at some point, it became the most incredible thing I’ve ever felt.” She ran a hand through his hair. “I’m looking forward to doing it again sometime soon.”

“Again and again,” he promises. “For the rest of our very long lives.” He kisses her. “I’ll even be bold and say we’ll do it again before we sleep.”

It’s only late afternoon, but he has every intention of keeping her right where she is until the next morning. He’ll conjure them food, whatever they need.

He rests his head on her shoulder, feels cocooned, even though he’s the one laying on top of her. This has to be Heaven, because it’s certainly not Hell. He would know.

“Nick?”

He hears the note of tentativeness in her tone.

“Sabrina?” he replies.

“Was I... Okay?”

She’s been thinking about that as they bask in their afterglow. She had never been that far with someone, but he had slept around, experimented. She wanted to be good for him, wanted to pleasure him the way he had pleasured her. She feels ridiculous for her insecurity, but it’s also very real and they have certainly learned to be honest with one another.

“You were perfect, Sabrina.” He lifts his head so he can look her in the eyes. “You _are_ perfect. The way we fit together…” He kisses her nose. “The way you call my name…” Her right eyelid. “The way you feel around me…” Her left eyelid. “The way you gave your body to me…” Her forehead. “The way you accepted mine…” His fingers brushes along her cheek. “I’ve read about connection through intimacy with one person, but never understood it until now. Sex with you will always be more than sex.”

Eventually, she has to get out of bed to use the restroom. She feels him now. She’s sore between her legs, but in a good way. She tries to hide from Nick that she’s a little uncomfortable, but he can see even the slightest shift in the way she moves her body.

When she opens the bathroom door to return to him, he’s there, waiting. He kisses her and leads her back into the bathroom. She sees before he turns her around that the sheets have been changed, the bed made, and she’s certain he did it by magic because she’s spent enough time with him now to know he sees no point in doing things the mortal way that can be done so much quicker by magic. She hates to admit she agrees.

He draws her a bath, helps her into the bubbles.

“Join me?” she asks and her hopeful eyes is all it takes for him to settle into the tub with her.

“You’re sore,” he comments.

“A little,” she agrees. “But it’s not uncomfortable.” She’s almost a little embarrassed to put her next thought out there, but she does, because Nick is _Nick._ “I like it, though. It’s nice, the reminder of you, how it felt to have you inside of me.”

He wants her again.

She feels him grow against her.

She wants him too.

“Nick,” she sighs, her head falling back so she can kiss him. “Please?”

“If you’re too sore…”

“I need you.”

It wasn’t want. It was need. Absolute and undoubted need.

He intends for them to return to the bedroom, but now that she’s experienced what it’s like to be with Nicholas Scratch, she can’t wait even the few moments it would take to cross the room. She sits on the bathroom vanity and wraps her legs around him to pull her to him and he takes her right there.

That’s how they spend much of the rest of their time in Italy. He takes her all over the country, showing her his favorite places and discovering new ones, but it takes little for them to slip off to be alone. They end up spending the entire summer abroad, instead of just the couple of weeks they planned. Sabrina wants to go to Paris, so Nick takes her. The next thing he knows, they’re in London. Dublin. Vienna. Prague. Budapest, Berlin. Athens. Barcelona. Lisbon. Small seaside towns. Storybook villages. Thriving metropolises. They wake up some mornings and simply decide to go somewhere new. Sometimes they teleport. Other times they travel by train or plane or whatever mode of transportation suits them at the time.

When they finally make it back to Greendale, just in time for Nick to resume his teaching duties at the start of the new school year, everything has settled down. There’s a new normal, a new order, a new church, a new way of life. It’s peaceful and deserved.

He finds Sabrina roaming the living quarters wing of the Academy a few days into the new term.

“What are you doing, Spellman?” He comes behind her and wraps his arms around her. He kisses her cheek and feels her smile.

“Looking at the available empty quarters,” she tells him. “I think it’s time for me to move out of the mortuary. Ambrose already has and Zelda agrees that it would be a good thing, especially given that we won’t be able to stay in the mortuary all that much longer, what with us not aging like mortals.”

“Why are you looking at empty quarters?” Nick asks. “Mine is plenty big for the both of us. Perks of choosing it when there were fewer teachers and students. I picked the second biggest one - Zelda, of course, got the most spacious of the accommodations.”

“Us?” Sabrina asks. She turns in his arms and looks up at him.

“Well, we are together,” Nick reminds her. “Unless something has changed since we got out of the shower this morning.” She blushes faintly at the memory of what transpired before his first class of the day.

“We are still very much together,” she assures him, her hand running down his chest. “Are you implying that I should move in with you?”

“I sort of assumed you already lived with me,” he admits. “I can’t recall a night you haven’t slept next to me since we left for Europe and just this morning I was complaining about how your shoes have taken over my closet.”

“I did yell at you for not doing the dishes two days ago,” Sabrina recalls. “Are you sure, Nick? You want me to move in with you?”

“Like I said, I thought you already had.” He kisses her, short and sweet. “I have to go. I have a class. But maybe tonight we can figure out the closet situation? Because really, Sabrina, you’re out of control.”

“I haven’t even bought all of my stuff here from the mortuary,” she reminds him with a smirk.

“We might have to claim one of these quarters as your closet,” he says, only half joking. “I’ll see you in a bit?”

“I’ll be waiting,” she promises. She kisses him and her kiss isn’t nearly as short and sweet as his. He groans when she pulls away. “Have a good class,” she winks. “I’ll see you later.”

He leaves her, focusing first on his breath to get himself under control and then on the fact that the woman he loves officially lives with him. He smiles to himself. There was a time when it seemed like this, him, her, together, was only wishful thinking, but now… Now he has a girlfriend who loves him to come home to every single day.

She’s waiting as promised when he returns after his last class of the day, but she’s in a silky piece of red lingerie that he knows she bought in Milan, but hasn’t worn yet.

“Unholy shit,” he breathes, taking her in, sitting on the side of his - their - bed, her legs crossed daintily, her lips as red as the lace covering all of his favorite parts of her.

“Stunned?” she asks with a flirty raise of her eyebrows.

“More than…” He pushes his suit jacket off his shoulders and toes out of his sharp dress shoes. Sabrina bites her lip. She’s got a certain fondness for him in his more professional attire. “You look.. There aren’t sufficient words.”

“Is Nicholas Scratch actually speechless?” she teases.

“Words aren’t needed for what I’m about to do to you.”

He moves to unbutton his shirt.

“No,” she stands. “Let me.”

He uses all of his willpower to allow her small hands to unbutton his shirt, slide it off his shoulders. He shivers as her fingertips glide down his bare chest and find the button of his dress pants. When he’s down to his boxer briefs, he decides she had enough fun and it’s his turn.

“Shame you went through all the trouble to put this on.” His hands slid up her thighs, under the material. “You look so good in it, but…”

“I wore it so you could take it off of me,” she tells him. Goosebumps pepper her skin as his hands slide up her body and remove the flimsy but expensive fabric.

It’s her favorite kind of sex. She’s fiercely independent, but in bed, she likes to let Nick take over. There is something about being at his mercy that turns on every part of her and she swears she would follow him anywhere if he keeps making him feel like this. He’s got her legs over his shoulders and he’s so deep into her she’s seeing stars and she’s absolutely begging him not to stop.

“Fuck!” he cries out, and then she’s falling apart. He keeps going, pushing into her, grunting and primal and dear Lilith she loves sex with him. She tells him as much and he explodes, the stream erupting from him strong as it settles deep within her. He collapses on top of her and she runs her hand through his hair. “I love you,” he breathes. “I love you.”

“I love you,” she replies. “I love you, Nick.”

Later, they’re a tangled mess of limbs, laying in bed together, both a little hunger, but it is far past dinner time at the Academy and the knowledge that they have to fend for themselves does nothing to push them out of the bed just yet.

“Nick?”

“Hmm?”

She’s laying on his chest and he’s lazily drawing patterns along her bare back, his other hand tucked behind his head. Her own hand occasionally brushes along his chest, and there is comfort in her consistent soft puffs of breath that tickle his bare skin. He’s reminded again that this must be Heaven, because something as wonderful as this wouldn’t exist in Hell.

“What does the future look like to you?”

“The future?” he asks, confused. “I can do a lot of magic, Spellman, but clairvoyance isn’t in my wheelhouse.”

“What do you see for us?” she prompts. “What do you want for us?”

“A lot of this,” he says. “Me and you, together.” He grins his wicked grin that gets her every single time. “Sometimes with clothes on, sometimes without.”

“Nick,” she groans, pretending to be annoyed, but she can’t be, because she loves him.

“I see us,” he says again, growing serious. He understands. They took a big step together today, making their living arrangements official. It’s not that she’s panicking. It’s that she wants his assurance they are on the same page. “I intend to marry you, Sabrina.”

“You do?” she lifts her eyes to his. He frowns, because of course he does. Doesn’t she know that?

“I do,” he’s patient. “Sooner rather than later. And then, one day, I intend to have a family with you.” He remembers telling her as much on the balcony in Tuscany, but perhaps he wasn’t as clear as he is now. “We have several lifetimes ahead of us. I intend to spend them all with you.”

She kisses him sweetly, full of love and promise.

“Can we live in Tuscany?” she asks as she settles back against him. “One day?”

“I can have us there tomorrow, if that’s what you want. Now if you’re okay with leaving our stuff and not saying goodbye.”

She laughs, because even though he’s joking, he also means it.

“How about sometime after that wedding, but before the family?”

“That sounds like good timing,” he agrees. He runs his hand along the length of her bare back. “We should get something to eat.”

“We should.” She doesn’t move.

“Eating would involve getting up,” Nick reminds her.

“Are you a warlock or aren’t you? Here I thought you never missed a chance to show off your conjuring skills.”

“In that case…” Nick untangles himself from her and sits up. He says his spell as calmly as one commenting on the weather and within moments, an expansive charcuterie board is before them.

“Show off,” Sabrina teases. He smirks.

“Only for you.”

* * *

He’s nervous as he approaches Zelda’s office. He knocks, waits for her call to enter.

“Brother Scratch,” she greets. “What brings you by? Trouble with the Gibbons boy again?”

“He seems to have straightened out after my last conversation with him.” He had scared the mischievous boy straight with the help of a demon, but the child had shown much better behavior since, so he has no regrets about his last resort efforts to bring the boy in line. “This is a personal matter, actually.”

“Have a seat,” Zelda says, working to hold back a knowing smile. She’s been expecting this visit for quite some time now. “How can I help you?”

“You know about how I traveled to the plane crash and found Diana’s pearls for Sabrina,” he begins.

“I do,” she confirms. She’s now certain this is the conversation she’s been waiting for.

“I also found this.” He reaches into his pocket and produces a piece of jewelry she knows all too well.

“That was Diana’s engagement ring,” she says with a fond smile. “It belonged to Edward and I’s mother.”

“I suspected as much,” Nick nods. “I found it with her pearls. Perhaps I should have given it to you or Hilda, but I wanted it for Sabrina.” He goes quiet for a moment. Zelda waits. “Had she not given me another chance, I would have returned it. But I held onto hope that she and I would find our way back to one another.”

“She’s your twin flame,” Zelda says. “Her mother would have wanted her to have that ring.”

“Which is why I’m here.” Nick takes a deep breath. “I want to marry her, Sister Spellman. We’ve had our ups and downs and we’ve both made mistakes, particularly me, but she’s where I belong. I want her to be my wife. I want to be her husband.”

Zelda can no longer mask her smile.

“I’ve been wondering when you would ask,” she admits. “You two have been inseparable for years now.”

“I would have asked a long time ago, but I knew she wanted to finish her mortal college experience first,” Nick says. “Now that she has and we’re planning our next move, I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to spend the rest of my centuries with her.”

“You’ll make her happy,” Zelda states. Even though she approves, even though she knows Nicholas Scratch will love and protect her niece until death does them part many centuries ago, Lilith willing, she still needs to make the threat. It is her niece, he plans to marry after all.

“I will,” Nick promises.

“It’s not a question,” Zelda tells him to drive the point home

“Does that mean I have your permission?” he asks.

“Did you ever doubt that I’d grant it?” she counters. He smirks just a bit.

“One can never be too certain with you, Sister Spellman.”

She snorts back a laugh, a rare show of something other than stoic emotion for her. He leaves her office a few moments later, both relieved and full of nerves. He doesn’t doubt that Sabrina will say yes - they have been talking about marriage for years - but it is still a significant moment he’s planning for, asking the love of his life to be his forever.

He finds her in their living room, photos spread across the coffee table.

“What’s all this?” he asks in greeting.

“I’m trying to decide which photos I want to enlarge and frame,” she tells him. “I’ve already narrowed them down, but I still have so many. Help me?”

The photos are of them, of her and her mortal friends, of the Spellmans. All the people who mean the most to her. He sits beside her and studies the images. They cover much of the last ten years, some of them before he came into her life, a few of them during the time they were apart. The pair of them, Ambrose, and her aunts look the same, photo after photo, but there is no denying the slow aging of her mortal friends. Harvey’s baby face is long gone in the most recent image of him, a wedding day photo with Roz at his side, her own face more mature, more confident. Theo, too, has lost his cherub appearance, his body filled out a bit more, his cheeks more defined. Sabrina never mentions it, but he knows it bothers her all the same, the fact that time stands nearly entirely still for her, but moves so quickly for them.

“Definitely this one,” he points to a photo of them.

They are on the terrace of his parents’ home - his home. He has a hard time calling the estate his. It will always be his parents’ estate to him. In the photo, Sabrina, is in a pair of leggings and an oversized sweater, a coffee mug in hand, him in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair a mess, his own coffee mug wrapped in his fingers. She’s perched on the railing, her legs crossed at the ankle. Her free hand is in his hair and his is resting on her thigh and he’s looking at her like she hung the moon. He reckons she’s looking right back at him in the same way. Ambrose sneaked the photo about two years ago, when he and Prudence - much to Sabrina’s chagrin - tagged along on one of their European adventures that had ended up being a Southeast Asia adventure by the end of it, their tendency to fall to wanderlust still as strong as ever.

“Definitely this one,” she agrees with a smile. She has already mentally marked that one as a definite. She knows it’s his favorite. He has it framed on his desk in his office. “Where have you been, by the way?” He’s later than usual tonight. “I’m starving, but I thought we could maybe go out to dinner?”

“I had a quick meeting with Zelda after classes.”

The truth - he never lies to her, even when he knows the truth might hurt her feelings. There was one fight in particular he thinks he’ll still remember three hundred years from now in which he had told her he needed a break from her during an especially stressful time for both of them, her studying for finals at her mortal college, him trying to grade papers for his own classes. She had been high strung and he had been short tempered and he knew the only solution to get through it was to take a timeout. She had interpreted it as he wanted a break from their relationship, flown off the handle, and no amount of reasoning would appeal to her until she settled down on her own. It had been a long three days, sleeping by himself, until she came around with a pouty lip and an apology he barely let her get out before his lips were on hers and their ‘I’m sorries” were traded in between the sheets.

Still, he’d rather not repeat those few days apart.

“But dinner?” she prompts.

“You really must be starving,” he quips.

“I didn’t eat lunch,” she admits. “I was so caught up in a conversation with the coven leader from Church of the Star that I didn’t realize what time it was.”

He smiles. She loves her work, spreading her father’s manifesto and inching, even if slowly, towards bettering mortal relations. He knows she’ll tell him all about it tonight, light up as she talks about her latest success. He’s eager to hear it, has his own stories from the day to share.

“What do you feel like tonight?” he asks.

“Chinese?” she proposes. “I’m in the mood for lots of not especially healthy food.”

“You’re a witch after my own heart,” he states. “Let’s go.”

He stands and offers her his hand. He knows her true motivations for going out to dinner. They will be leaving Greendale soon and she wants to soak up every moment of it she can before their departure. It will be at least a hundred years before they can safely come back, at least to the town outside of the Academy’s walls, and he can’t imagine how hard that is for her to accept. It’s hard enough for him.

Greendale is the first place that has ever felt like home.

“But first…” She pulls him to her, catching him off guard. He’s more than happy to kiss her in greeting, doesn’t think about the bulge in his jacket pocket. She feels it press against her just as he remembers its there. He had meant to return the ring to his hiding place, but she was too distracting. “What’s that?”

“Nothing…”

Something about the way he answers too quickly makes her quirk an eyebrow. She knows him. It’s not nothing. It’s something, and she wants to know what it is - particularly if he’s content on not telling her.

“Then you won’t mind if I take a look.”

He tries to grab for her hands, but she’s too quick for him. Her small hand is in his coat pocket and clasped around the box before he can stop her.

“Sabrina…”

She opens it and gasps. She looks up at him, speechless for once, her eyes wide and curious.

“Nick…” she chokes out, barely a whisper.

He takes just a moment to look at her, then throws all thoughts of a grand proposal out the door because _of course_ she let her curiosity get the best of her and dove in headfirst. He takes the box from her and takes a deep breath. He has no idea what he’s going to say - he’d thought he would have time to practice his speech - but he supposes he’ll have to wing it and hope for the best.

“I did have a meeting with Zelda,” he tells her. “To ask her for your hand in marriage.” Sabrina gasps and covers her mouth with her hand. He’s not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign, but he plows ahead anyway. “I’ve loved you for a third of our lives, if you do the math. Even if its presumptuous of me to assume that you and I are going to spend the rest of our centuries together, I can’t help it - I love you now, I’ll love you more tomorrow, and Lilith willing, I’ll love you even more five hundred years from now.”

Her eyes are full of tears. She tries to blink them away, because she doesn’t want to miss a single detail about this moment and the tears are causing her vision to blur. She’s wanted this for ages, prayed to Lilith, dropped hints to Nick that she was ready for marriage. It’s finally happening and she’s stunned and pretty certain she ruined some grand plan he had, but she doesn’t care because he’s asking her to be his wife.

“Even if my clothes and shoes take up all the space in the closet?” she asks, because she can’t help herself.

“Even if,” Nick promises. He brushes her hair back from her eyes. He takes the ring from the box and tosses the box aside, glad he opted for mortal tradition for this particular moment. He would present her with turtle doves too, but even though she’s never told him, he knows this is what she wants. To be proposed to with a ring, just like her warlock father proposed to her mortal mother.

The box lands with a thunk somewhere nearby. “I know we’ve had our fair share of tough times, and I’m not foolish enough to think we won’t have more, but I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my centuries with you.”

He drops to one knee then, her left hand in his, her heart racing. One of them - or both of them - is shaking. Nick can’t tell, because his focus is on her.

“Sabrina Spellman, will you marry me? Please?”

“Yes,” she breathes out. “Of course! Yes!”

His own eyes are flooding with tears, but he focuses on sliding the ring on her finger before he stands and either he pulls her to him or she pulls him in, but they are wrapped in one another, holding one another close, soaking the moment in.

“Nick,” she sighs happily. “I love you so much.”

“I love you more than I will ever be able to put into words,” he replies.

They share a long, slow kiss, one that says everything they are both thinking. When they part, Sabrina is beaming and Nick is grinning like a fool who can’t believe his good luck. Sabrina holds up her hand and takes her first true look at the diamond that now adorns her finger. She gasps.

“This is beautiful, Nick.” She tilts her hand side to side, watching how the dim light in the room bounces off of it.

“It was your mother’s,” he confesses. She looks shocked.

“How?” she asks. “I asked my aunties about her jewelry once, and they said she was wearing…” It dawns on her. “When you went diving all those years ago.”

“I’ve had it ever since,” he admits. “I wondered if I should give it to your aunts, but I wanted it for you.” He takes her hand, runs his thumb across the diamond. She’s wearing her mother’s pearls. She never takes them off. “I wanted you to be my wife even then.”

“Nick…”

She’s speechless.

Often, his love for her takes her breath away. In quiet moments, she wonders if he knows how much she loves him, if she does a good enough job of showing him. All she can do is wrap her arms around him one more time.

With her in his arms, he squeezes his eyes shut, wrings the tears out of them. It leaves him dumbstruck, how much she loves him, how she lets him be by her side, hold her, make love to her, when she could have anyone or be anyone she wanted to be. He has no idea why she chooses him again and again, but he’s more grateful for her love every single day. He hopes she has just a fraction of an idea of how much he loves her in return. He certainly tries to show her each and every day.

“Wait.” She pulls away to look up at him. “Did I ruin your proposal?”

He smiles.

“Technically? No. I didn’t have a real plan yet, just permission from Zelda to ask you. I was going to ask Hilda and Ambrose, to be polite. But I figure permission from the high priestess herself should suffice.” Her smile grows. “Once that was done, I was going to come up with some grand proposal and ask you in the next couple of weeks.” His own smile grows. “But this works too.”

He moves in to kiss her again.

“Who do you want to tell first?” he asks when they part.

“We can tell people tomorrow,” she decides, her hands dancing through Nick’s hair at the nape of his neck. “Tonight, let’s keep it between us, celebrate.”

“I like that plan,” he agrees. Another kiss. “Still starving?”

“Yes,” she admits with a smile. “But…” She closes her eyes. Moments later, a spread of Chinese takeout appears on their kitchen counter. “No need to go out.”

“Sometimes those powers of yours really come in handy,” Nick quips. He steals one more kiss before they go for the food.

They settle on the couch a few minutes later, plates piled high. She watches Nick bite into an egg roll - she knows they are his favorite - and wonders at the fact that she gets to marry him. The photos still spread across the coffee table catch her eye.

“I think I’ll frame all of them,” she decides. She smiles at Nick. “There is a lot of wall space in Tuscany.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May this happily ever after help you wait for Part 4 with hope. 
> 
> Thank you for humoring all of my Nabrina pieces. If you've read some of my other pieces, you know how I got here (see my one-shot 'Selfless' for a note on what got me to share my work again) and that I've since been inspired to chase a career change and get my MFA in screenwriting so I can make my own magic on the screen. I learned on Friday that I got an interview at one of the programs I applied to. It's a competitive program and if nothing else, it came at a time of doubt in my skills and showed me maybe I'm a good enough writer to pull this off for real. 
> 
> So, that drabble to truly say thank you for reading and inspiring me to keep writing. I promise I do a LOT more than write Nabrina fics (work full time, coach gymnastics, compete in weightlifting, run my own personal training and nutrition coaching business... I exist on coffee and 4 hours of sleep a night), but this is my happy place. Do what you love, write? (Pun intended there). I love interacting with you all on Instagram and Twitter and through my blog even, which isn't remotely Nabrina related. What a community. 
> 
> Let me know your thoughts on whatever you want to tell me about. I'm a good listener. :)

**Author's Note:**

> The angst. 
> 
> But the angst is deserved. And honestly? Don't shoot me, but I don't *hate* that Nick broke up with Sabrina in Part 3. I mean I hate it. But also - it makes sense. Here's to hoping for one hell of a redemption story for both Nick and their relationship. They would be fools not to follow that through. 
> 
> Thoughts on the first chapter? Leave 'em before you proceed to Chapter 2 (which is a bit happier...) 
> 
> Thanks for letting me post all the Nabrina stories! xoxo


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